


and there's a storm you're starting now

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst City, Basically AU Season 2, But not even super AU?, F/M, Gen, My first AOS fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-08 16:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4313052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Season 2. In which Jemma and Fitz struggle to deal with what happened at the bottom of the ocean, Jemma is sick of having to hide, Ward is redeemed, and SHIELD struggles to remake itself while fighting Hydra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What's Past is Prologue

Prologue 

May was the first person she talked to. 

Ever since Jemma and Fitz had arrived on Fury’s helicopter at the Playground, Skye had been trying her hardest to make Jemma speak, but had mostly received silence. Occassionaly she would draw out a mumbled response, but Jemma’s eyes never even glanced at her; they remained fixed on Fitz’s pale face and on the breathing tube coming from his mouth. 

It was nearly three in the morning, on Fitz’s fourth day in his coma, that May silently took a seat next to Jemma. May looked between Fitz and Jemma slowly, and then sat back, staring at the wall. 

“You need to sleep,” she said eventually, quietly. “You can’t help him if you can’t take care of yourself.” 

“I didn’t help him, and that’s why we’re even here,” Jemma whispered darkly, her voice hoarse from lack of use. 

“You did and that is exactly why you’re here.” 

Several minutes passed in which neither woman spoke. Jemma finally did, looking up at the ceiling. May was pretty sure it was the first time she’d seen Jemma look away from Fitz in days. 

“I never want to feel that weak again,” she said. “We ran into that medpod because that’s all we know how to do—run and hide. But we’re SHIELD agents. At least we were. And now I don’t know what that even means, but I don’t want that to be my only option.” 

“Are you saying you want to leave SHIELD?” 

Jemma shook her head. “At this point, I don’t know where else we would go.” 

May did not comment on Jemma’s reflexive use of “we”; there was no need to comment on Jemma’s lack of ability to even imagine life without being half of FitzSimmons. 

“So you want to learn to fight.” May stated it simply, as if it wasn’t something that Jemma had been agonizing over for days. 

“Have you ever had a partner?” Jemma rasped suddenly. 

“Yes,” May replied after a beat. “I did.” 

“Did they ever get hurt, because of you?” 

An even longer beat, followed by, “Yes.” 

“How do you—how do you let go? Of the guilt?” 

“You don’t,” May said. “It just takes a different shape. It pushes you to get faster. To not make those same mistakes again.” 

“I want to learn,” Jemma blurted out. “Teach me. Please.” 

May nodded. “Okay. First step of your training: go to sleep. We’re starting at 0600.” 

Jemma looked anxiously back at Fitz’s face. “But—“ 

“He’ll be here when you get back. We’ll start slow. An hour in the morning, hour in the afternoon.” 

Jemma hesitated, but did not want May to rescind her offer. “Okay.” 

She squeezed Fitz’s hand, pressing his knuckles to her lips. 

“Alright, Fitz,” she said, her voice far softer than when she’d been speaking to May. “I’ll be back in a few hours. I promise. Don’t go waking up without me.” 

May waited for her near the door, walking her back to her new bunk at the Playground. 

“0600.” 

Jemma nodded. “0600.” 

May waited until Jemma had latched her door before heading back to her own bunk. She’d grown so accustomed to practically living inside of a cockpit that being in a stationary building felt stifling. 

“You talked to her then?” Coulson asked from her doorway. May nodded, releasing her hair from her ponytail. 

“We’re going to start training in the morning.” 

Coulson raised his eyebrows. “For the field? I didn’t approve that.” 

“I didn’t ask you to,” May replied simply. “Simmons asked me to teach her to fight. I know how she feels, watching Fitz fight for her life because she wasn’t fast enough.” 

“Melinda—“ 

“It was a long time ago, Phil, but that doesn’t mean I don’t carry it with me all the time,” May cut him off. He swallowed hard and nodded. 

“I know.” 

“Then you know why it’s so important to help her through this.” 

“I do. If Fitz doesn’t make it…” 

“He will,” Melinda said fiercely. “A world without SHIELD? I can handle that. A world where those two aren’t finishing each other’s sentences? That’s a world where there’s no hope for any of us.”


	2. All I Can Do Is Keep Breathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Andrew Garner is called in to support the team, Skye confronts how she feels about Ward's betrayal, and Jemma finds solace in May.

**Three Weeks Later—Present**

“Sorry I’m late,” Jemma says as she rushes in, her skin gleaming with sweat. She’s wearing her training outfit, some black tight pants and a black tank top, her feet encased in her trainers. Fitz still hasn’t gotten used to it yet, seeing her that way. 

“It’s—it’s—“ 

Jemma smiles at him sympathetically, running a hand over his arm. “Let’s get started, shall we?” 

Fitz opens his mouth, makes a few stuttering sounds, and then clasps his mouth shut. He grits his jaw and nods solemnly. 

“Alright then,” Jemma chirps brightly, but he sees the pain in her eyes as he struggles. She hands him a soft ball. “Now, let’s just do ten squeezes of this, take a break, and do ten more. We’ll do that four times, yeah?” 

“I’m not—I’m not—“ 

“A child, I know,” Jemma sighs, and she gives him an exasperated eye roll. He smiles a bit at that. At least some things haven’t changed. “I’m trying to help you, Fitz. You know that.” 

“I know,” he finally gets out, and lets out an annoyed grunt of his own. 

“Hello my favorite nerds,” Skye announces, bouncing into Fitz’s hospital room. “Simmons, May and Coulson need you. I think the new psych guy is here.” 

“I’ve got work to do,” Jemma says, and it comes out clipped. Skye looks a bit taken aback, and raises her eyebrows to Fitz, who shrugs. 

“Woah, Jemma. Everything alright?” 

“I’m fine,” Jemma huffs. She glances back at Fitz, who watches their exchange with raised eyebrows. “Fitz! Your exercises.” 

“Bloody he—he—“ 

“Hell,” Jemma and Skye both finish, Jemma’s voice dull and Skye’s tinted with amusement. 

“I’m just tired,” Jemma admits grudgingly. “Training is taking it out of me, I’m afraid. I don’t see why I’ve got to go first.” 

“I’m not sure that they even want to do your eval right now. I think they just want him to meet you since you’re, ya know, the head of the science division and all.” 

“Yes, I am,” Jemma huffs, turning back toward Fitz, “and because of that, I haven’t got the time for tours and meet and greets!” 

“You must be Dr. Simmons,” a deep voice sounds from behind Skye. All three occupants startle, and they turn to find May smirking beside a well-dressed man. 

“Why yes, yes I am.” 

“Dr. Andrew Garner,” he introduces, moving into the room to shake her hand. She returns the movement and smiles tightly. 

“Very nice to meet you, Dr. Garner.” 

“Dr. Garner is going to jump right in,” May cuts in. “So either one of you can volunteer or I’ll pick who’s going first.” 

“May,” Skye whines. “Listen, I was in the system. I’ve done ten thousand of these things. There’s nothing this guy can find out about me or offer me about myself that I don’t already know.” 

“I’m just asking you to talk to him,” May says with surprising patience. 

“I agree with Skye,” Jemma jumps in. “I feel fine. I’ve got a science division to run, and Fitz’s recovery to oversee, and I just don’t have time to be lying on therapy couches. No offense, Dr. Garner.” 

“None taken,” he says, looking bemused.

May sighs in a display of uncharacteristic drama. “Well, then I guess none of you are going to take the opportunity to get to know my ex-husband.” 

“WHAT?!” Skye, Jemma, and Fitz all shout. Jemma gives Fitz a small smile, impressed with his cognitive process. 

“Me, me, me!” Skye practically yells, bouncing up and down on her toes. “Me first. Come on, Mr. May, we’ve got a lot to discuss.” 

Jemma laughs as Skye bounds off, Dr. Garner following behind her. May gives her a calculating look. 

“You’re next, Jemma. One hour.” 

“Please, Agent May,” Jemma implores. “I’m a doctor. Don’t you think I would know if I needed help?” 

May rolls her eyes. “With all due respect, Simmons, you are the last person to know if you need help.” 

“Well that’s just—“ 

“Yo—you did ju-jump off the—th—th’ Bus, Je-Je—Jem,” Fitz stutters out. 

“Traitor,” Jemma hisses at him, and May smirks. 

“One hour, Simmons. Two for you, Fitz.” 

*** 

Skye settles down in the lounge, fiddling with her water bottle as she tucks her legs underneath her. 

“So, how did you meet May?” 

“We’re not here to discuss my relationship with Melinda,” he replies calmly. 

“Oooh, you call her Melinda. I bet if I called her that I’d be flat on my back in like, three seconds.” 

“Probably less than that,” he teases. Skye barks out a laugh. “But like I said, we’re here to talk about you. Your experience since the Hydra infiltration. Agent Ward’s betrayal. The aftermath of what he did to Agents Fitz and Simmons.” 

Skye looks at him with a skeptical expression. “You think we’re gonna tackle all that in an hour? Hate to break it to you, buddy, but this is your one shot at a one-on-one with me. I’m not doing this more than once.” 

He sighs, crossing one leg over the other. “How about this? At the end of each session, I’ll give you one piece of information about my personal life.” 

Skye grins at that, and Andrew gives a kind smile back. He decides Skye doesn’t need to know that he and Melinda had already made his agreement, and she had told him which bits and pieces he should divulge to her three younger agents. When she had called him, concerned for the well-being of her team, he had heard something in her voice that he hadn’t since before she went on the Bahrain mission. So he had packed up his bags and gotten into Phil Coulson’s black SUV, arriving at the Playground with the intention of helping these three agents—“kids”, as Melinda had called them—through their traumatizing experiences of the last month. 

“Alright, you’ve got yourself a deal.” 

“So where do you want to start?” 

Skye suddenly appears self-conscious. “I mean, I had just become a SHIELD agent when this all went down.” 

“You said you’d been in the system?” 

“Foster care,” Skye clarifies. “SHIELD, and especially the Bus…it was the most permanent home I’ve ever really had. So losing that…I mean, it was terrible. It really was. But Coulson doesn’t really go down that easy, and he found us this place. I’ve still got my team. I still have my people.” 

“Not the entire team,” Dr. Garner corrects. He watches as Skye flinches. 

“Yes, the entire team,” she practically snarls. “Grant Ward was never a part of our team.” 

“I’m not sure that that’s true,” Dr. Garner says gently. “He jumped out of the plane to save Dr. Simmons. He shot a man that he believed shot you. He and Fitz teamed up on an undercover mission, and you and Dr. Simmons broke the law to try to extract them.” 

“How do you know all of this?” 

“Melinda isn’t closed off to everyone, Agent Skye.” 

Skye grumbles under her breath. “Okay, fine. He was a part of our team. It felt like he was, but he never really was. He murdered Agent Hand. He killed I don’t know how many people! He put Fitzsimmons at the bottom of the fucking ocean and left them to die! And Fitz may never be the same! Any single good thing he ever did for any of us can’t make up for any of that.” 

“The realization of his betrayal. How did that feel for you?” 

“I was disgusted,” Skye says after several moments of silence. “Disgusted with him, and disgusted with myself for not seeing it. But I had to save my team. I played along and I scratched a message into a picture for the team, so that they would know and come get me.” 

“How did you play along?” 

“He made it seem like he was still with us. He told me he had feelings for me, he was trying to take advantage of what I thought was a bond between us, but what I now realize was just a bunch of lies.” 

“Is there any chance that the bond could have been real?” 

“No,” Skye spits. “ _Nothing_ about Grant Ward is real. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out that wasn’t even his real name.” 

Dr. Garner nods understandingly. 

“It’s just impossible to imagine. It feels inexcusable. Insurmountable.” 

“Is there anything else happening right now that just feels insurmountable?” 

“Fitz,” Skye says immediately. “He’s one of the most brilliant guys I know. Smart, and funny, and…just, unflinchingly loyal. Have you ever met someone like that?” When he nods, she continues. “I watch him struggle to get his words out, and Simmons is just…drowning, no pun intended, trying to save him. It’s like they never came out of the ocean. Simmons isn’t herself. She’s determined to become a field agent now, and don’t get me wrong, I’m just as set on it as she is. We both want to protect ourselves. We’re done waiting for the Grant Wards of the world to step in and fight for us because we learned the hard way that you can’t trust them. And Fitz, I can see how frustrated he is. How agitated. Honestly, he seems downright _angry_. And he seems especially angry at Simmons.” 

“Why do you think that is?” 

“I think he thinks she needs him to be her Fitz again, but he doesn’t seem to get it—he’s always been her Fitz. It’s not just about being smarter together.” 

“And how does all of this effect you?” 

“Fitzsimmons are some of my best friends,” Skye admits. “I’ll never be close to them the way they are with each other, but the three of us had something special. But I wasn’t in that medpod. They went through something that I can’t understand. I don’t understand the science so I can’t help Jemma in the lab, and I don’t understand the medicine so I can’t help Fitz recover either.” 

“What do you feel like you can do?” 

“Nothing,” Skye says, playing with the sleeves of her top as her voice cracks. “I feel…helpless. In all of this. And the worst part is that I have to go down to that damn vault every day, trying to get information out of Ward.” 

“That must be hard.” 

Skye snorts. “Hard? Ha. It’s torture. To look at him, to listen to him wax poetic and beg me to understand why he did what he did.” 

“What does he want you to understand?” 

“I don’t know, something about what Garrett did to him to make him the way he is. But like I said, I just don’t think it’s excusable.” 

“Why don’t you stop going to the vault? I’m sure that Coulson would understand. He’s made it very clear that the wellbeing of his agents, especially the wellbeing of his original team, is one of the top priorities.” 

“Going down there and getting information on Hydra out of him is the only useful thing I can do,” Skye whispers. 

Suddenly alarms begin to blare. May’s voice rings out over the intercom. 

“Medical assistance required in Vault D. I repeat, medical assistance required in Vault D.” 

Skye’s eyes widen. “Vault D. That’s…” 

“Ward,” Garner finishes. Skye bolts to stand, flinging open the door. Up ahead she sees Jemma peeling out of the medical bay with a large first aid case and running through the door which will take her to the vault. Skye follows, heart pounding in her ears. 

_What could have happened to him? Is he dead? Is she happy if he is? Why does her stomach feel so heavy?_

When she reaches the bottom of the stairs, Coulson has just finished bringing down the barrier and Jemma darts in. Blood is pooled all over the floor where Ward lays, his arm sliced open. 

“He’s lacerated his wrists,” Jemma says loudly in a clipped tone. “Someone open the case, I need to stop the bleeding.” 

Dr. Garner stands at the back of the room and watches quietly as Dr. Simmons desperately presses thick pads of gauze onto the man who tried to kill her. May comes down the stairs and gives him a heavy look before approaching the medical kit. Skye, he notices, is also off to the side. She has a hand clapped over her mouth, shaking her head slowly and looking wildly between Simmons, Coulson, and Ward. 

“We need a board. He needs to be taken upstairs, he’s going to need a transfusion and I need to suture these right away.” 

May kneels down beside Jemma and takes one of Ward’s arms, applying pressure so that Jemma can focus on one arm at a time. 

“Skye, go grab Agent Triplett. Have him bring a board.” 

Skye remains standing in shock. 

“SKYE, GO!” May shouts. Skye snaps back to reality and races back up the stairs, shouting for Trip. The vault remains silent as Coulson paces, Dr. Garner watches, and May and Jemma both attempt to stop the man who betrayed them from bleeding out on his cell floor. Skye and Trip return with remarkable speed, and Trip quickly tosses the board onto the floor. 

“I need two on each side,” Simmons orders. Trip, May, and Skye all gather around Ward. “One, two, three, lift.” 

They race up the stairs as quickly as possible with Ward’s weight between them, Coulson and Dr. Garner following suit. Skye tries to ignore the way that Jemma’s hands are soaked in blood. She tries even harder to ignore the tears in Jemma’s eyes and the crazed look in them. 

When they reach the med bay, Fitz is pacing back and forth in his glass cubby. The only other room equipped is the one just beside his, and Jemma barks orders for her teammates to get Ward on the bed. They do so and she immediately starts swiping at the lacerations with sanitizing wipes as Trip laces a needle for her. 

Jemma sews up the laceration with surprisingly steady hands, and Trip works on the other arm. 

“Somebody get me a bag of A positive,” Jemma says wearily as she hooks up machines to check Ward’s vitals. 

“We don’t have a stock of blood, Dr. Simmons,” Coulson tells her. 

“Is anyone here A positive?” 

The room goes quiet, the only sound the echoing of the machine monitoring Ward’s pulse and blood pressure. 

“I am,” Skye says quietly. 

“You don’t have to do this,” May says with a shocking amount of gentleness. “You don’t owe it to him. We will all understand.” 

“If Simmons can be elbow-deep in the guy’s blood, then I can help too,” Skye bites out. “Drain me, Simmons.” 

“I’m not _draining_ you,” she grumbles, but she sits Skye down and begins the process anyway. 

Trip, Jemma, and Skye are the only ones who remain in the room, as Coulson goes to his office to review the Vault D tapes and Dr. Garner and May wander off to discuss the incident. 

“Wha—wha—wh,” Fitz struggles, but the sight of Grant Ward’s face through the glass wall is too much for him. He cannot break through the aphasia fog as he tries to understand what is going on in front of him. 

Jemma sighs heavily. “Ward sliced open his wrists. Suicide attempt.” 

Fitz sits heavily on the edge of his bed, playing with his bad hand and hanging his head. He looks back up and finally takes in the sight of Jemma. She is still sweaty, blood all over her hands. Her entire outfit is black, but he can see the moisture clinging to it. There are streaks of blood on her face as well, from when she attempted to swat her hair away from her face. 

“Je—Je—Jem—Jemma,” he stutters out, shakily making his way to the wall between them. He places his hands on the glass. “Jemma.” 

She looks up at him with wild brown eyes. His gaze his focused on her arms and she finally takes in the blood. Suddenly the smell is overcoming her other senses, and she stumbles backward. 

“I got this, girl,” Trip says as he oversees Skye’s donation. “Go clean yourself up.” 

She nods shakily, eyes distant. Fitz moves to follow her. 

“Woah, Fitz,” Trip says, meeting him in the hall and gently pressing him back toward his own room. “You know you’re not supposed to be walking around yet. Simmons would have my head if I let you overdo it.” 

“Sh—she—she nee—“ 

“She’s fine, Fitz. Just needs to clean up is all. When has a little blood ever got Agent Simmons down?” 

Fitz can think of loads of times. He can think most vividly of her cleaning the blood off of his face at the bottom of the ocean, tears pooling in her eyes as her thoughts raced around their impossible situation. He can’t get the words out, though, and he’s not sure that he would even want to share the med pod with Agent Triplett. 

He sulks back to his bed and glares at Trip, crossing his arms and staring into the hallway in the direction that Jemma went. 

*** 

_This is when Fitz comes_ , Jemma thinks. She thinks of his arms wrapping around her in the supply room, all the times she disappeared and he would come find her. She never had to go to him, he always knew where to go and what to do. _But he’s not coming. He’s not coming_. 

__He’s not coming_. _

As she scrubs at her blood stained hands and arms she can’t stop the hot tears from racing down her cheeks. Her breath quickens as she struggles to calm herself, but she can’t. She hadn’t seen Ward since he dropped them out of the sky, and now here she was, covered in his blood after keeping him alive. 

The thought, as well as the still overwhelming smell, make her wretch into the toilet. She coughs up bile and the clinical part of her brain remembers that she should have eaten something. She can’t remember her last meal as she wretches again. She finally makes it back to the sink and splashes cold water on her face, covering it with shaking hands as she finally gives in to the sobs. 

She feels hands on her shoulders. For an irrational moment, she thinks Fitz has somehow made it to the bathroom all the way down the hall. She’s briefly angry that he did not follow her instructions to not walk outside of physical therapy until the end of the week, but it wanes when she thinks of how much she needs him. 

When she turns to fall into his arms, she realizes that it is not Fitz. It is May, and May grabs her into a tight hug, putting her hand on Jemma’s hair and stroking it. 

“It’s okay,” she mumbles. “It’s alright. Shh, you’re okay. It’s over. Trip can handle the rest. It’s over.” 

Jemma allows May to comfort her. She lets May calm her down, and then she lets May lead her to her bunk. She lets May help her out of her bloodstained clothes and slips into the sweats that May lays out on her bed. She takes the cup of tea that May puts in her hands, even though it’s not the way she likes it. Fitz is the only one who can make her tea the way she likes it. 

“Is there anything else you need?” May asks patiently after she’s on the couch in the common area. 

Jemma shuts her eyes and breathes, thinking if there’s anything else that can calm her besides some more time. She doesn’t think so. 

“No. Thank you, May.” 

May nods, expression soft, and turns to leave. 

“Actually, wait.” May turns back expectantly. “Can you please check on Fitz? Can you let him know that I’m alright?” 

May’s face crinkles in an expression that Jemma can’t quite place. She nods once again and quietly leaves for the med bay. 

Jemma sips her tea, breathing deeply through her nose. She looks up to find Andrew Garner standing in the doorway. She heaves a deep sigh and waves him into the room as he shuts the door behind him. There’s no avoiding this. Not anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter kind of got away from me. I didn't plan on making it so long, or so Skye-centric. Next chapter, we'll see more of Coulson, and the entire team will begin to better understand what Garrett did to Ward. I didn't like that the AoS writers blatantly stated that Ward attempted suicide, and that nobody ever brings that up again. We'll also see some snippets of Garner's sessions with Jemma and Fitz.


	3. nobody here's perfect (and everyone's to blame)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulson brings in some new recruits, Fitz pulls himself further from Simmons, and Skye learns more about Ward's relationship with Garrett.

Jemma takes a swing, making contact with Skye’s stomach. Skye lets out a huff of pain and swings back, but Jemma manages to duck and avoid it. 

“This isn’t fair,” Skye pants. “You’re a science baby.” 

Jemma grins wryly, pushing her sweaty bangs off of her face and backing up a few steps. “It’s basic physiology. Once I got the theory down, implementing it wasn’t difficult.” 

Skye rolls her eyes. “You know, you’re kind of a dick, Simmons.” 

She sweeps Jemma’s legs out from under her and grins when she hits the mat. 

“Cheap shot,” Jemma gets out through her tight diaphragm. 

“No way!” Skye scoffs, reaching out a hand to help her up. May sits in the corner, glancing up at them occasionally to smirk or bark out an order. 

Their morning training sessions have become a group effort. May was spending so much time trying to train Skye and Jemma separately that she hardly had time to complete her own more challenging workouts in between her briefings with Coulson. His suggestion to simply combine the younger agents’ sessions just made sense. It also allowed them to spar with one another, an advantage given their similar levels of skill. She was impressed with how far both women had progressed, and knew a large part of it was fueled by a desire to avoid their emotional stresses by engaging in exhausting physical exercise. As long as they continued attending their sessions with Andrew, May would allow them this outlet. 

Trip’s appearance at the door goes unnoticed for sometime. He finally clears his throat. 

“Coulson wants us in the briefing room. He finally got those recruits.” 

May jumps up immediately, while Jemma and Skye take a moment to collect themselves. They each uncap their water bottles and chug before following Trip and May. 

“I’ll get Fitz,” Jemma offers. “He’ll want to meet them.” 

Trip raises his eyebrows. “Do you think that’s a good idea? He’s been—“ 

“He’s fine,” Jemma practically snaps. “He’s doing very well, thank you.” 

Trip raises his hands in surrender and Skye gives him an exasperated look before dragging him ahead. Jemma sets off toward the medical bay and arrives at Fitz’s room. She had put up a curtain between his room and Ward’s as soon as she had the time, and it had greatly increased Fitz’s mood, in a relative sense.

“Hello, Fitz,” she greets him brightly. “We’ve got some new recruits, so we’re to go to the briefing room.” 

He looks at her, eyes a little dark. “Does—do—doesn’ really ‘ave mu—much t—to do with, um, with…me, then.” 

“So it’s one of those days, then,” she says shortly. “It has everything to do with you, Fitz. You’re a part of this team as much as anyone else.” 

He snorts derisively and she breathes in deeply to keep herself from snapping at him again. She grabs a blue tie off of a hook on the wall and approaches him with it. Her hands move quickly to knot it and she tries her best to ignore how he refuses to meet her eye, knotting his hands in his lap instead. 

She places a hand on his face, her thumb running over the stubble on his cheek. “We’re moving you out of here today. You’re doing much better, and the physical therapist said you’re well enough to move about on your own now. Getting some mental stimulation with me in the lab, I think it’ll be what you need.” 

“I’m not, um…I’m not a uh, a…sci—“ 

“You are still a scientist,” she says fiercely, grabbing his face with both of her hands. “You are Leopold Fitz. You are the smartest and most capable man I know.” 

“Not anymore!” he bursts out, standing suddenly and separating himself from her. He moves to the door and strides down the hall, blowing past her as she struggles to keep up. 

“Fitz, please!” she calls out. He doesn’t even glance back, clenching and unclenching his bad hand as he tries to put as much distance between them as possible. “Leo, wait!” 

This freezes him. She never calls him Leo, and his faltering is enough for her to get in front of him once more. 

“You’re not the same,” she says lightly. He expects there to be more sadness, disappointment, more something in her voice. But instead she just states it, the way she states any other fact. “You’re different now. We survived something horrible, Fitz. We did it together. We started all of this together, and you are a madman if you think that there is any universe in which we do not keep going. Together.” 

For a moment she thinks he’s going to smile at her, maybe roll his eyes at her for being so dramatic about it. Instead, he turns his face away from her and keeps walking. She heaves a sigh and follows after him, blinking away the moisture in her eyes. 

They reach the briefing room and Skye looks worriedly between them before taking her place at Jemma’s right and giving her arm a squeeze. Jemma shakes her head almost imperceptibly at her friend, but she knows that Fitz has seen the exchange by the way he rubs his good hand on the back of his neck and stares at the ground to avoid Skye’s glare. 

“Alright, team, meet our latest recruits,” Coulson says after everyone has filed in. “This is Lance Hunter, Isabelle Hartley, and Jose Idaho.” 

A woman around Coulson’s age stands in the middle, two younger men flanking either side. 

“Call me Izzy,” she says, her voice raspy. Skye decides immediately that she likes her. “I was part of SHIELD for over ten years, and then I retired. These fools were a couple of mercenaries who thought they could use me for intel.” 

Hunter rolls his eyes. “C’mon, Iz, it wasn’t like that.” 

“A fellow countrymen!” Simmons cheers when she hears his familiar accent. 

“Sheffield?” he asks her. She nods. “London,” he says, indicating himself. “Nice to meet ya, love.” 

Trip and Skye exchange a look as Fitz snaps his eyes up to watch the exchange. 

“I worked for STRIKE. That’s British SHIELD, really. Before that I was in the SAS, did some tours in Iraq and Sierra Leone. Came back and there wasn’t much for me, so…mercenary it was.” 

Idaho shrugs when all eyes turn to him. “Pretty much the same story. Did a few tours in the Middle East, came back…wasn’t ready to leave the field, I guess.” 

Some of the older members nod understandingly. A hulking man suddenly appears, wiping his hands on a rag. Coulson nods at him. 

“And this is our new mechanic, Alphonso Mackenzie.” 

“Please, call me Mack,” he says, his voice smooth and deep. “Truly, please.” 

Skye lets out a bark of laughter. 

“Mack has been a part of SHIELD for a while. He checks out clean.”

The rest of the agents settle into an awkward silence. “Well, I’m Skye. No last name, chose it myself. Typical Harry Potter story. I was an orphan, was part of the Rising Tide, got picked up by Coulson’s bus team, my S.O. turned out to be a serial killer, the usual.” 

Izzy is the only one who laughs outright. “Nice to meet you, kid.” 

The new eyes then turn toward where Simmons stands, with Trip on one side. Without even meaning to, she settles in to an old routine, pointing at her Scottish partner.” 

“Fitz,” she says. 

There is an awkward beat as he grips the holotable in front of him, knuckles white. “Uh, she’s uh…Simmons.” 

“He’s engineering,” she says, tone slightly dimmed. 

“Bio—uh, biochem.” 

She fakes a grin. “You can call us Fitzsimmons.” 

The grin slips right off of her face as he storms out again, and she deflates against the wall. Trip quickly jumps in. 

“Antoine Triplett, call me Trip.” 

“His granddad was a howling monkey,” Skye supplies in the silence. 

Trip rolls his eyes, chuckling. “He was a Howling Commando. I wanted to be in SHIELD since I was a kid. Thought granddad and the boys got rid of Hydra the first time, but I guess not. So I’m ready and prepared to finish that legacy.” 

“Alright, introductions have been made,” Coulson says. “Before I show the new kids around the base, here’s a quick briefing. We’ve got intel on the location of Hydra’s science headquarters. We have on agent in there already undercover, but so far she’s basically been made into a glorified bouncer. We may need to send someone else in on the ground floor, try to find out more about what they’re doing with the Centipede program and other alien technologies.” 

“Additionally, our Hydra prisoner made an attempt to take his own life four days ago. He is now stable, and we are working with the base’s new psychologist, Dr. Garner, to better understand his relationship to the late John Garrett and Hydra.” 

Skye spluttered. “There’s nothing to understand, AC!” 

He fixes her with a dispassionate look that she has become familiar with since he became director of SHIELD. “That’s enough, Skye.” 

“Lastly, we’ve picked up some intel from some of our SHIELD agents undercover in Hydra. Apparently Hydra’s got their hands on an 0-8-4 that can’t be touched by human hands. So they’re using this man, Carl Creel. He’s a gifted who can take on the properties of any material he touches.” 

Jemma stepped forward, tilting her head to the side. “Fascinating. The potential benefits that could be associated with a power like that—“ 

“Unfortunately, Hydra’s not so interested in the benefits so much as they are getting their hands on what our informants refer to as the Obelisk,” May cut her off. 

Jemma sighed and stepped back. “We need to try to get Creel first. Without Creel, they can’t get the Obelisk,” Skye reasons. 

Trip hestitates. “Unless he’s already in too deep. Who’s to say he doesn’t have one of those kaboom eye cameras.” 

“Kaboom what?” Hunter asks doubtfully. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Coulson says flippantly. “I think Trip is right. Skye, I want you to find anything you can on Carl Creel. Medical records, current residence, criminal record, known family and friends. All of it.” 

“Got it,” she replies. 

“The rest of you, we’ll be waiting on Skye’s tracking information, and then we’ll be organizing a mission to bring him in.” 

Everyone took that to mean that the meeting was over, and dispersed accordingly. The new folks approached Coulson, prepared for the tour of the base, while the rest of the team set out on their respective tasks. Skye went to the lab to start her Creel research, and Jemma set off in search of Fitz. 

“Dr. Simmons,” a voice called out behind her. She turned to find Dr. Garner approaching. “It’s about time for our meeting.” 

“Oh, right,” she said. “Sorry, we were in a meeting with Coulson.” 

“Not a problem. Come on, then.” 

She follows him to a room that had become the designated therapy room, or as she and Skye liked to call it, the Tower of London. Jemma takes a seat in her usual armchair across from his. 

“So, how are the nightmares?” 

“Jumping right in, I see,” Jemma says softly. He nods gently and she sighs. “The same. Almost every night. They’ve become more vivid now. They’re less flashback and more—complex.” 

“Complex how?” 

“Some nights it’s just Fitz and I in the med pod, him blowing out the window and I wake up when I started screaming in the dream. But lately he blows out the window, and when I grab him and I reach the top, we’re at the Playground. He’s sitting in his hospital room and snapping at me. Telling me I didn’t do enough, that I’m only making him worse.” 

“Do you feel like that’s true?” 

“These days, yes. It doesn’t matter what I say or do. He’s furious at me, all the time. And the worst part is, I can’t even give him the space he needs because I’m the only person in this entire base that even knows half of what needs to be done for his recovery.” 

“If you could bring on another doctor, would that help you?” 

Jemma looks at the floor and thinks for a long moment before answering slowly. “Yes. I think it would. It would help us both, to have some space. I can’t…I can’t live with his anger pressing in on me at all angles, at all times. I already feel so much guilt, and the angrier he is, the worse he gets. I’m the only thing that makes him worse.” 

“I’ve contacted a former colleague, with Director Coulson’s permission,” Andrew says gently. “She’s a brilliant medical researcher. She thinks she can help Fitz.” 

Simmons feels the weight of his words settle in her gut. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” 

“I’ll let you think about it, but I think it might be what’s best for you. For both of you.” 

Jemma takes a shaking breath in. “I know it’s absurd, but I…I imagine that when he gets a new doctor, that’ll be a new partnership for him. A partnership without all the expectations that ours has attached to it, and that he’ll just—that he’ll abandon ours.” 

“Does that partnership still exist?” 

Jemma feels the burning in her eyes and can’t help the sob that rips from her throat. “No, it doesn’t.” She stands, “I’m sorry, Dr. Garner, I have to go.” 

She runs from the room, and Andrew leans back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Melinda enters quietly, and he looks up. “I’m beginning to think I need a door that locks from the outside. Make you lock them in here with me until their sessions are over.” 

“They? Who else leaves?” 

“Skye, of course. Fitz usually takes off after a few minutes. Even Agent Tripplet has walked out on a session.” 

“Really?” May asks doubtfully. “That surprises me.” 

“Me too. These kids, they’re not doing well. Simmons needs another doctor as support. She can’t help Fitz alone, but she seems unwilling to let me call in Dr. Cho.” 

“She doesn’t want to lose her partnership with Fitz to another brilliant woman,” May supplies. 

“I’m not sure that the gender of Dr. Cho has anything to do with it, but yes, she doesn’t want to lose her partnership.” 

May sighs. “Coulson has this crazy idea, to send Simmons into Hydra’s science headquarters. Undercover.” 

Dr. Garner raises his eyebrows and May gives him a sharp look. 

“Andrew, do not even say it.” 

“I’m just saying, it may not be the worst thing. With the proper training.” 

May rolls her head back and groans. “This is why women should always be in charge,” she grumbles before leaving. 

***  
Jemma stands in front of the bathroom sink, sobbing and struggling to gain control of her breathing. She feels it all again, the drowning. The water streaming down her face and the water she inhaled feel one in the same, and she tugs at her long hair in agitation. It feels like it’s wrapping around her neck, cutting off her air supply. Her legs are numb, and the room starts to feel shockingly like the med pod.

She slides open a drawer and finally grasps the red-handled scissors she knew were there. Without a second thought, she lifts her hair up and feels them slice through her brown hair. As it hits the floor, she feels like she can breathe again. 

She keeps cutting. 

Eventually, there is a banging on the door, and she opens it to find Skye on the other side. Skye’s eyes widen as she takes in the hair all over the floor and Jemma’s choppy cut. She quickly schools her face into a neutral expression and takes Jemma into her arms. 

“Alright, Simmons, let me even it out.” 

***  
Skye’s meeting with Dr. Garner comes sooner than she expected, and she finds herself glaring at him across the room. 

“Whatever you did to Simmons, you should be ashamed of yourself.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“I found her in the bathroom. She chopped off all of her hair. She was sobbing like it was the end of the world.” 

“We all define the end of the world as something different,” Garner says evenly. “What’s yours?” 

Skye snorts. “The end of my world was finding Agent Koenig dead and knowing that Ward had done it. That he was Hydra. The entire world was crumbling around me, and that was the nail in the coffin.” 

“Have you ever wondered what really happened to put him in that position? Had Agent Ward ever told you about his family?” 

“Yes, but how much of that is really true?” she scoffs. “When you find out that everything you knew about a person was a lie, how can you believe anything they ever said to you?” 

“That is a completely justified opinion,” he says patiently. “However, in light of Agent Ward’s recent breakdown, I’ve been tasked with better understanding his circumstances. And I think that if you were to be able to understand them, you might be able to find some more peace with yourself.” 

“I don’t need any more peace.” 

“I’m just saying. Not for him, but for yourself. It’s not about forgiveness or reconciliation. Just a little understanding; maybe you wouldn’t feel like the world ended six weeks ago.” 

Skye considers this for a moment leans forward. “Did he give you permission, to tell me this?” 

“Yes,” Dr. Garner says calmly. “He decided that he was willing to disclose any information regarding his relationship with John Garrett and how it lead him to Hydra.” 

Skye grits her teeth and leans forward. 

“Talk.” 

*** 

When Grant Ward opens his eyes, he knows the version of Skye sitting at his bedside, head in her hands, must be a hallucination. It isn’t until her bloodshot eyes settle on him and widen upon finding him awake that he starts to think she just might be real. 

There are restraints on his arms and on his legs, and he’s hooked up to an IV and some other machine that’s taking his vitals. He’s woken up in this room several times over the last few days, but the sedatives keep him mostly asleep. This is the most alert he’s felt in god knows how long. He isn’t sure how long it’s been since his…accident. 

He attempts to make a sound, but his throat is too dry. Skye’s head shoots up at the grating noise, and she quickly brings him a cup of water, guiding the straw into his mouth. He sips it and tries not to flinch at how quickly she moves away from him. 

“Skye,” he rasps. 

“Hi,” she says simply, after a long moment. “How are you feeling?” 

“Uh, like shit, if I’m honest.” 

He expects a barb at that, like she’s been giving him when she comes to visit him in Vault D. Visit probably isn’t the right word. 

“I talked to Garner,” she finally says, sitting back down and then jumping back up. He recognizes her nervous energy as she paces around at the foot of his bed. 

“Oh.” 

“He told me the basics. About Garrett breaking you out of juvie, dropping you in the woods.” 

“Did he tell you about Buddy?” 

“Who the hell is Buddy?” 

Grant takes a deep breath. “Buddy was Garrett’s dog. Well, kind of. He dropped him in the forest with me. We kept each other alive. He was all I had in the world, for months on end. Garrett’s visits were few and far between. When he decided I was ready, he gave me my final test. To prove I wasn’t weak.” 

Skye sees where the story is going and instinctively puts a hand on her mouth. “No.” 

“I couldn’t do it point blank,” he chokes. “I had to set him off running, thinking he was going to fetch a bird for us both.” 

Skye swallows hard. “So then he brought you back. Dropped you at the Academy.” 

“Yeah. He got me into the SpecOps program, and that was that. From then on, my life was all about following orders. But he kept drilling something into my head. SHIELD leaves it’s people to die. Never trust them. Take what you can from them, and be ready to take advantage of the opportunities they’ll give you.” 

“He trained you. To be his Deathlok.” 

“Something like that,” Ward says with a humorless laugh. “I don’t expect you to believe me, Skye.” 

She stares at him for a long moment and tears her eyes away. 

“Fitz. Is he…” 

“He may never be the same again,” and her words come out harsh. “Simmons barely managed to drag him up from the bottom of the ocean. He sustained some pretty major brain damage, Ward.” 

His face crumbles and he struggles on the restraint, trying to bring his hands to his eyes. Something akin to pity rises up in Skye and she can’t quite place the reason. “The pod was supposed to float,” he chokes out. “It was supposed to fucking float.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So again, this kinda got away from me. It's longer than I expected, and I didn't quite hit all the plot points I wanted to, but they can wait until next chapter. There may be a time jump coming up in the next few chapters as well.


	4. And the highway signs say we're close but I don't read those things anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fitz sees Jemma's struggle first hand, Jemma pays Ward a visit, and Coulson has a proposition for Jemma.

Fitz sits at the small desk in his new bunk at the Playground, desperately trying to make his bad hand cooperate. A few weeks ago, the task at hand would have been child play. He’d never had any issues repairing the DWARFs, but now it feels insurmountable. He slams Sneezy down, backing away for a moment and taking a shuttering breath. He glances at the clock and sees the red numbers glaring at him. 3:40 a.m. Simmons would kill him if she knew he was still awake, and compromising his progress, at that. He finds he doesn’t care, though. There is something about being around her now that physically hurts, but his overwhelming need to see her contradicts the pain. 

He settles back down at his desk, somewhat calmer now, and takes another shot at it. 

He is startled from his fierce concentration by a scream from the bunk beside his. He’s not sure who’s idea it was to put him and Simmons so close together. His money would be on Skye, though. 

He feels his heart stop. His memory has been hazy, and some details are not as clear as they used to be, but he would recognize that scream anywhere. It stops for a moment and he feels his muscles relax. She’s awake now, he tells himself. She’ll be fine. 

“NO!” she yells. “FITZ!” 

Fitz operates on muscle memory. He unconsciously rises and rushes out of his door, bursting into hers. He finds Jemma tangled in her sheets, sweat glistening on her face and her hair at the crown of her head damp. There are tears on her face, and he is surprised to see that the light in her room is still on. She had always been insistent on complete darkness when sleeping. 

“Jemma,” he mumbles, shaking her lightly. “Jemma, c’mon.” 

She shoots up, gasping and coughing. Why was she coughing? He hurriedly grabs the glass of water off of her bedside table and hands it to her, running his hand over her back with his good hand. 

“Shh, it’s alright. You’re o—o—okay.” 

He overestimated the current state of her motor skills, and she drops the glass of water with her shaking hand, soaking herself and her bed. She screams again and scrambles backwards. 

Fitz feels his face go slack. There are dark circles beneath her eyes and her collarbone juts out painfully from the pale pink tank top she wears to sleep. She’d always been thin, but her skeleton had never been so visible to him. 

He is pushed aside as May sweeps into the room. She grabs Jemma’s face with both hands and looks in her eyes, forcing Jemma’s to still from their frantic sweep of the room. 

“Breathe in. One, two, three, four, five. Hold. One, two, three. Out. Five, four three, two, one. Hold. In. One, two, three, four, five.” 

Fitz swallows hard as he watches the exchange. It is seamless and seems well practiced. Jemma follows May’s instructions and slowly but surely, the distant look in her eyes begins to fade. Her pupils slowly begin to return to their normal size. 

“I can’t feel my legs,” she whispers. 

“It’s alright, it’ll come back,” May says evenly. 

How had he missed all of this? He’d been back in the bunks for three days, finally discharged from his glass cube of a hospital room. The first two nights his medications had given him long bouts of restful sleep. Tonight was the first time he hadn’t taken them, opting instead to wrestle with Sneezy at his desk. 

“Is she um, is she…is she okay?” Fitz murmurs from where he is backed up against Jemma’s impeccably organized desk. 

May snaps her head to him, looking surprised to find him there. Jemma’s dark eyes meet his and he is startled by the look in them. Fitz has spent nearly ten years reading her, but he cannot place what he sees on her face. It is some combination of fear, desperation, hurt, and something else. It is the something else that he can’t understand. 

Jemma looks over at the clock, breaking their eye contact. He begins to move to leave the room. 

“I’ll be ready for training in the morning,” she says blandly to May. “Thank you.” 

May nods at her. “See you then.” 

She leaves, nodding at Fitz to follow her as she slides Jemma’s door shut. 

“She shouldn’t be—be---training,” Fitz grits out. “She needs to uh—she needs, she needs rest.” 

“She doesn’t sleep well anymore,” May replies calmly. “This is nothing new, Fitz.” 

He blinks owlishly at her, not understanding how May is not as disturbed by what just happened as he is. She takes in his expression and sighs. 

“Just because you’re struggling doesn’t mean you’re the only one,” she says sagely, turning to leave him on his own in the hallway. 

He returns to his bunk and climbs into his bed. It is directly on the other side of the wall as Simmons’, and he places a hand on the wall, turning to face it. 

He turns May’s words over in his head, and when he falls asleep, he dreams of empty eyes and jutting collarbones. 

*** 

The next day, Jemma finds herself in front of Ward’s cell in Vault D. She notes that there is now a small stack of books in the corner, along with a couple of free weights and a composition notebook. 

Ward looks shocked to see her, and he takes a seat on his bed as he faces her. Jemma never thought she would use the word “small” to describe Grant Ward, but that is exactly how he looks, cross-legged in his nondescript garb that resembles hospital scrubs. 

“Hello,” she says quietly, sitting in the steel chair on the other side of the glass. He takes in a sharp breath. 

“Hi,” he chokes out. Her hair is short, cropped to her shoulders, and it looks greasy. She licks her bottom lip and worries it with her teeth. 

“I’m not sure why I’m here,” she admits softly, playing with the sleeves of her grey henley. It looks more like something Skye would wear, and he wonders for a moment if she’s borrowed the other girl’s clothes. 

“I know you’re not going to believe this, but it’s nice to see you,” he replies after a moment. Her eyes finally meet his, and she looks as though she is searching something. She nods as though she has found it.

“You really did think that the pod would float,” Jemma says almost breathlessly. 

“I did,” Ward croaks. “The dimensions and the material, it should have floated.” 

Jemma thinks for a moment, picturing the specs for the pod. “You’re actually right. It should have.” 

“I was sure that you and Fitz would find a way out of it. It was the only way to get you off the plane alive.” 

“Why not just kill Garrett?” she asks after a beat. The question has been swirling in her head ever since Skye arrived in her bunk with red eyes and a swollen face from crying. They’d talked through what Garner had told her about Ward’s past, and despite her apprehension toward the man, Jemma could not help but pity Ward on some level. The manipulation and abuse that had shaped his life and character…from a clinical level, she could not ignore it. Skye’s naivety allowed her to believe that knowing the team, growing to care for them, should have been enough to undo that. Jemma knew a thing or two about conditioning, though, and she knew that it would take extensive therapy to unravel what had been done to him. 

“I owe him everything,” Ward replies immediately, like a reflex. She studies him carefully, scooting the chair closer to the barrier. 

“That may be true,” Jemma says lightly. “But why?” 

“I would have rotted in prison if it weren’t for him.” 

“But isn’t that what’s happening to you now? Because of him?” 

Ward leans forward, his head down. He takes a few deep breath and looks up at her. The beard he’s grown makes him look even more gaunt. She wonders how much he’s being fed, and if he’s getting proper nutrition. She makes a mental note to check on that when she goes back upstairs. 

“Yes, it is. John was—the closest thing to family I had for a long time. My family was so screwed up that I didn’t really…I guess I didn’t notice what John was doing. I didn’t see it for what it was.” 

“It was difficult for you to understand what a healthy relationship of any kind would look like,” Jemma supplies. He appears grateful as he nods rapidly. “That makes sense. You grew up in an abusive household and were fairly isolated from everyone except for your siblings and your parents. When Garrett got you out and began grooming you, you viewed him as a savior. You were willing to do whatever he wanted in order to not go back.” 

“Yes,” he breathes. “Exactly. I forgot how smart you are.” 

“Genius, more accurately,” she corrects, and finds a small smile on her face. He lets out a surprised laugh. 

“Simmons, are you really here to make me feel better?” 

She shakes her head. “No. I’m here because I needed to understand. To discuss with you what I’d learned. I’m trying to reconcile the man who jumped out of a plane for me with the man who dropped me out of the sky. You realize the irony there, don’t you?” 

He snorts. “Well now I do.” 

“What I mean to say,” she begins cautiously, “is that I’m coming to the realization that there is more than meets the eye in this situation. In many ways I’m still the seventeen year old girl who joined SHIELD, with two PhDs and a million questions. Accepting you as a sociopath who betrayed us was too simple.” 

“That was simple?” Ward asks incredulously. 

“I’m never satisfied until I’ve properly examined all angles of a given situation,” she replies. “You don’t look well, Ward. I’m going to discuss your nutrition with Coulson. You need more calories, and possibly some nutritional supplements. If you don’t mind, I’d like to run a blood test this afternoon to check for any deficiencies.” 

Ward starts in surprise. “That’s—yeah, that would be okay. Thanks, Simmons.” 

She gives him a small, close mouthed smile. “I’d better go, before Dr. Garner arrives for your session. It’s nearly 9 a.m. now.” 

He nods at her. “So nobody knows you’re down here?” She shakes her head. “Looks like you participate in bad girl shenanigans after all.” 

Ward is shocked when she throws her head back in a full-on laugh. “I suppose I do, Ward.” 

Then she waves awkwardly and makes her way back up the stairs and out of Vault D. Ward picks his book up off of the mattress and tries to read it, but finds himself too distracted by his conversation with Simmons. The more he begins to understand about the trauma of his abuse by both his family and by Garrett, the more he understands about himself and all of the relationships he’s had. The way he feels about shooting Buddy is nearly identical to the way he feels about dropping FitzSimmons out of the plane. He decides to take that up with Dr. Garner when he arrives, and allows himself to get further lost in the world of Harry Potter, a luxury he’d been denied in his adolescent years. 

Meanwhile, Simmons knocks gently on Coulson’s door and enters when she hears him allow it. 

“Hello, sir. I wanted to discuss something with you,” she says nervously. 

“Perfect timing, Simmons. I have something to discuss with you, too.” 

“Oh!” she says, surprised. “Would you like to go first?” 

He shakes his head, waving her off. “Go ahead.” 

“Okay, well…and please don’t be angry with me, sir, but I’ve just come back from Vault D.” His eyebrows predictably shoot toward his hairline and she continues on shakily. “I wanted to speak with Ward about what Garner told Skye, and then she told me, of course, and since it wasn’t a violation of confidentiality given Ward gave permission for Garner to share with the team, I thought—“ 

“Simmons,” Coulson interrupts, looking vaguely bemused. “Just get to the point.” 

“Right,” she says. “Anyway, I’m not sure that he’s getting proper nutrition. I understand that he is a prisoner and I, of all people, understand that he needs to face the consequences of his actions. However, it is also my duty to maintain the physical health of everyone on this base and—“ 

Coulson interrupts her again. “That’s fine, Simmons. Run some tests and let Koenig know what he needs.” 

Jemma smiles, relieved. “Great. Thank you, sir. What did you want to tell me?” 

“I have a mission for you,” Coulson says. “If you choose to accept it, that is.” Simmons gives him a look. “I’m sorry, I’ve always wanted to say that.” 

She smiles. At least some things hadn’t changed. 

“As I was saying at the briefing the other day, we need someone undercover in Hydra’s R&D department.” 

“Are you saying..?” 

“I’m afraid so. You’re our best option. I think that we can get you in pretty easily. Your work is well known, and your talents will certainly give you access at a fairly high level. We also have some evidence that indicates they may be looking for Fitz, and there’s a good chance that having you instead will appease them for the time being. “You’ve undergone a fair amount of field training at this point, and have proven adequate at hand-to-hand and in firearms. You’ll need some additional training with May given your…questionable ability to lie, of course.” 

“They want Fitz?” 

Coulson nodded solemnly. “His experience in weapons design is pretty highly sought after.” 

She shakes her head. “He specializes in non-lethal weaponry. Which would just be metal junk if it wasn’t for me.” 

“Exactly, your chemical compounds are what make them non-lethal. With the proper coercion, they think they can get Fitz to build them some pretty lethal equipment, and they’re probably not wrong.” 

Simmons takes in a shaking breath. “Is it alright if I have some time to think about it sir? With Fitz’s recovery, I’m not sure that it’s a good time for me to leave.” 

Coulson nods. “That’s fair. But I also think you should observe Fitz’s interactions with Skye, compare them to his interactions with you.” 

She isn’t quite sure what he means by that, but she agrees as she leaves his office. She was planning on finding Skye anyway, to talk to her about Coulson’s nearly mad proposition, and because she needed a shower. She finds her in the Comms room, attached to the lab much like their set-up on the Bus. She is talking to Fitz, and Simmons halts from where she cannot be seen and observes. 

“It just doesn’t, um, make sense. The hardware should be fully operational,” he says. “The olfactory sensors are in perfect order, and he’s still collecting data. He just won’t uh—won’t—share it, with the other DWARFs.” 

“Maybe he’s just not in a sharing mood,” Skye jokes as she types away on her laptop. 

Jemma feels a lead weight in her stomach. Fitz can communicate quite easily with Skye, only stuttering somewhat before he finds the right words. 

The only thing impeding his progress is her. 

The realization watches over her so powerfully that she feels bile rise into her mouth and before she can stop it, she’s wretching into the bin at the entrance of the lab. This causes both Fitz and Skye to snap their eyes to her, and Skye jumps up in concern, brushing Jemma’s hair back. 

“Simmons! Are you okay?” 

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and smiles shakily. “Um, I think so. I could actually use your help with something, though. It’s about time for uh, my, you know.” 

She doesn’t want to admit in front of Fitz that she needs Skye to stand on the other side of the curtain while she showers, holding her hand and grounding her to reality, but unfortunately, Skye doesn’t seem to understand.   
“Your what?” 

“My shower,” she whispers, cheeks heating in mortification. Skye looks guilty and rather angry at herself as she nods. 

“Of course, just give me one minute. I’ll meet you over there.” 

Simmons nods, feeling the irrational lump growing in her throat. She turns and flees toward the bathroom, and Skye watches her go with a furrowed brow. 

“What does she need you for uh, for showering um---for showering purposes?” 

Skye gives him a frustrated look. “Have you asked her, even once, how she’s holding up, Fitz?” 

He backs up, surprised by her anger. “Well, not—not really. Not since I woke up, I guess.” 

Skye laughs derisively. “You want to know why she needs me when she showers? Because she can’t stand water, Fitz. You were knocked out almost immediately, when you blew open that window. But she wasn’t. She remembers all of it. You’re not the only one who drowned, you’re just the one that doesn’t have to remember it. So yeah, Fitz, I hold her hand while she showers so she doesn’t think she’s at the bottom of the fucking ocean!” 

She is nearly panting from her anger, screwing her eyes shut. When she opens them, Fitz looks appalled. She’s not sure if it’s at her or at himself, but guilt floods her regardless. 

“I’m sorry, Fitz. I don’t mean to undermine what you went through. I know your recovery has been so difficult. I’m just really worried about her.” 

Fitz swallows hard and rubs at the stubble on his face. “No it’s—it’s okay. I guess I hadn’t really thought of it.” 

Skye nods, biting her lip. “It makes sense. Just…try to think of that moving forward, alright? She’s pretending like everything’s just fine but she needs you.” 

She gives his shoulder a squeeze and then she is gone. Fitz sits down heavily on his lab bench, thinking about what he saw in Jemma’s bunk in the early hours of the morning, and how she reacted to having to admit her weakness in front of him just now. 

_You’re not the only one who drowned, you’re just the only one who doesn’t have to remember it._

_Just because you’re suffering right now doesn’t mean you’re the only one._

He wants to help her, he really does. But being around her just reminds him of everything he lost at the bottom of the ocean. They can no longer bicker the way they once did. He’s not fast enough to keep up with her brilliant mind. They aren’t really FitzSimmons before, as he’d been brutally reminded at the recruit meeting. That being said, she’d been his best friend for ten years, even if he had admitted to her being more than that. 

They still hadn’t discussed it, hadn’t even come close. She was so focused on his recovery, of trying to make him what he used to be, that he was pretty sure she’d forgotten the whole episode. He, on the other hand, knew how inadequate he was now compared to who he had been. If she hadn’t wanted him then, there was no way in hell she’d want the poorly put together mess he is now. 

He drops his head in his hands, only raising his eyes when the new mechanic, Mack, enters the lab. Sighing, he gets ready to struggle his way through his work again. 

***   
As Jemma reattaches her wet hand to Skye’s after getting some shampoo out of the bottle, she finally tells her. 

“Coulson wants me to go undercover in Hydra.” 

Skye nearly drops her friend’s hand in shock, but recovers. “WHAT?” 

Jemma breathes out a laugh as she rinses with her available hand. “I know, it seems sort of crazy, doesn’t it? He has a point though. We can’t know what they’re trying to make using whatever powers the Obelisk has, and so far we’ve had no success getting Creel. My knowledge of SHIELD and my skills would fast-track me to a fairly high position in their R&D department.” 

“Okay, that does make sense, but still. Jemma, think about how dangerous that mission is. If you get found out, they will kill you. Or worse.” 

Jemma takes in a deep breath. “Yes, my bet would be on the worse. I just feel useless here, Skye. I’m hardly helping Fitz, without the Obelisk to analyze there’s not much for me to even do in the lab. I’m just…lost. A ghostly little scientist with no tools or answers to find.” 

Skye snorts. “Ghostly little scientist is about right. You’ll definitely need more field training before you’re prepared for that kind of Op. And are you really comfortably leaving Fitz?” 

The water turns off, and Skye withdraws her hand, shoving a towel into the curtain in a well-practiced move. Jemma comes out with wet hair and the towel secured around her body, and looks anywhere but Skye as she answers. 

“Yes. The only thing that’s making him worse is me.” 

Skye opens her mouth to protest, but Jemma isn’t finished. 

“I’m going to go. And that’s the end of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. This story is really getting ahead of me! I already have the next chapter written out. Please let me know what you think. I feel like I'm writing Ward a little out of character, but I also think he was completely out of character in S2 anyway. It felt like they just took a complete 180 with him that didn't completely make sense, so I'm trying to show how his trauma has affected him while also making the team a little bit more compassionate toward his plight. I kind of forgot that I had introduced Mack, Hunter, Izzy, and Idaho last chapter, but they'll start popping up again soon. 
> 
> A little taste of next chapter: 
> 
> “Fitz!” she said cheerily, pushing the button to slide the doors open. “Everything alright?” 
> 
> “Just fine, th—thanks,” he grumbles, turning away from her. 
> 
> “You seem upset,” she supplies weakly. 
> 
> “Not really you—you’re problem, then is—is it?” 
> 
> She looks at the ceiling, bouncing her leg as she tries to work through both her adrenaline and the onslaught of hurt that each and every conversation with Fitz comes with these days. 
> 
> “You know what, Fitz? You’re right. It’s not my problem. When you’re reading to talk to me like an adult, you know where to find me,” she hisses.


	5. maybe you were the ocean (and i was just a stone)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma removes barriers, Skye reveals something she shouldn't have, and Jemma finally tells someone what really happened in the med pod.

“So you’re going undercover in Hydra,” Ward says, attempting to keep his voice even as he looks at the scientist on the other side of the barrier. She is wearing training clothes, and Ward struggles to reconcile this image of her with the long-haired girl in the cardigans and button-up shirts. 

“Yes,” she replies, unwavering. “And I need to learn how to hold up under interrogation. May has been helping me, but I think that you might be the best man for the job. You’ve seen the inside. You might have more information about what I’m facing.” 

Ward licks his lips and stands up from the bed, pacing back and forth. “Simmons, I don’t think this is a good idea. You were never cleared for field work to begin with. Sending you that deep undercover just seems—” 

She rolls her eyes. “Join the party. The only one on board with this is Coulson.” 

“And it doesn’t strike you that there’s a reason for that?” 

She huffs and stalks to the control panel, typing in a code and overriding the barrier. Ward’s eyes widen as it falls. 

“Put it back.” 

“Are you going to hurt me, Ward?” 

“No,” he grunts. “But put it back.” 

She crosses her arms, eyes narrowed appraisingly. 

“I don’t see the purpose for it if you’re not a danger to me, Grant.” 

He stumbles backwards toward his bed again, a strange feeling in his chest as she uses his first name. Nobody had called him that since—well, Skye was the last one. 

There are sudden footsteps running down the stairs, and there she is. Skye. 

“What the hell?!” she practically shrieks. 

“Leave it,” she says calmly to her friend. “Ward and I are having a conversation.” 

“Jemma, have you lost your damn mind?” 

“That’s what I’m trying to say,” Ward grumbled, pressed against the back wall. Skye raises her eyebrows at his position. 

“Why do you look like you’re being hunted, Ward?” 

He looks shiftily around him. “Because it feels like I am.” 

Skye sighs, rolling her head back before approaching the panel. She puts the barrier back up and Jemma stiffens while Ward finally relaxes. 

“Thank you,” he says. She nods at him. 

“What on earth are you trying to do down here?” 

“I want him to teach me how to hold up under interrogation. He knows more about Hydra then any of us.” 

Skye gives her an incredulous look before slumping slightly. “Okay. That does make some weird sense. Even if I leave right now, you’re still going to do it anyway at some point or other. But I’m going to be here.” 

She puts her hand to her waist, where an ICER is secured. Jemma huffs again but nods and approaches the panel once more. Ward’s heart begins to race. 

“Jemma, please—“ he says, his voice strangled. The use of her first name jars her.

She finally looks back to him. “Ward,” she says gently. “What are you so afraid of?” 

“I’m safe in here,” he says softly, sinking to the ground. “I can’t’—can’t hurt anyone in here.” 

Jemma and Skye exchange looks. “Trust me,” Jemma mumbles to Skye, taking the barrier down and approaching him. Skye continues to look weary as Jemma kneels in front of him and gently places a hand on his knee. 

“Grant,” she says, tone even. He looks at her with panicked, wild eyes. She puts a hand up in front of her and looks to him encouragingly, nodding toward her palm. His shaky hand rises to meet hers and when they first make contact, he flinches. He swallows hard and places it lightly on her palm once more, causing Jemma’s eyes to glisten. “I’m going to talk to Dr. Garner before I leave. You need more human contact. You’re too inside your own head. I understand why you’re afraid of yourself, but you’re never going to feel like you’re not a weapon unless you’re allowed to be something other than that.” 

Skye watches from a distance, feeling choked up. Ward dropped Simmons and Fitz out of a plane, ruined their lives and their partnership, but here she was, kneeling before him and taking care of his emotional well-being. Jemma’s unwavering humanity awakens something within her, and she steps forward as well, kneeling beside her. 

“I’ll talk to him with her,” Skye says, her voice a little raspy. “I’ll come down a few days a week, no barrier. We’ll…talk. Maybe I can get my hands on Battleship.” 

He looks at her guardedly, but nods. 

“Okay, Skye,” Jemma says gently. “Why don’t you go up and finish up my fabricated records? Ward and I are gonna get to work.” 

Skye reluctantly stands and reaches the stairs. She looks back, and Jemma has scooted a bit further from Ward, sitting cross-legged and looking at him imploringly. 

“What’s their primary technique, then?” 

He clears his throat, letting go of his knees. “I didn’t really witness any interrogations, but I heard some stories. When people didn’t talk, a lot of the time they used needles underneath the finger nails to try to coerce people.” 

Skye feels her stomach turn and she makes her way up the stairs, trying to shake the image of Jemma chained to a table, needles beneath her fingers. She shuts the door and takes several deep breaths before a sound to her right startles her. 

“Oh! Fitz, what are you doing over here?” 

“I was uh, about to ask you the—the same thing.” 

“Simmons is down there with Ward. She’s working with him on…something.” 

Fitz looks at her doubtfully. “What on earth is she working with Ward on? I get that he’s being—being uh, being rehabilitated and all, but he’s not exactly got the ski—skills she’d need for a um…a project.” 

Skye shrugs. “I think it’s something from Garner, something they’re both supposed to be ‘working through,’” she says, putting air quotes on the last two words. “What’s up?” 

He looks down at the mug in his hand, one that he’d made her back at SciOps. It’s painted like a nebula (and admittedly, he’d bought it that way), but he’d lasered the laws of thermodynamics onto it. One of her favorite parts of science, the thing she always mumbled to herself when she failed. The first one had always been written on a sheet of paper above her workspace, wherever that might be. The same one she’d said to him in the pod. 

“I was uh—I was going to bring Simmons some, um, some---te—tea.” 

Skye grins at him. “Aww, that’s so sweet. But now might not be the best time.” 

“I’ll just uh, pop down. Real quick.” 

“Fitz, are you sure that’s a good-“ 

But he was already opening the door, a bit shakily with his bad hand. She groans and follows him back in. 

“What the hell?!” he nearly shouts when he takes in the two of them sitting on the floor, nearly touching. “What’s going—happ—happening here?” 

Simmons jolts away from Ward, staring at Fitz in confusion before glancing accusingly at Skye. 

“We’re working on something,” she says evenly. “Can I help you with something, Fitz?” 

He takes a step as if to approach her, but then looks at Ward apprehensively. “I uh, I made—made—made you some um, some tea.” 

She smiles at him indulgently, standing to get the mug from him. “And in my favorite mug as well. Thank you, Fitz.” 

It’s the most she’s said to him in days, ever since Dr. Cho came to the base to assist in his recovery, taking over for Simmons. He can barely hunt her down these days, and when he does, he’s lucky to get even half of a sentence before she rushes off to do something else. He’s sure she’s hiding something from him, but he’s not sure what. 

“Skye, would you mind taking Fitz back upstairs? And please let Dr. Garner know I’d like to speak with him in about an hour. You’re welcome to come, of course.” 

The forced politeness in her tone gets Skye moving, and she gently takes his elbow, leading him out of the room. When they reach the top, he stares down. She’s resumed her seat across from Ward, and sips at her Earl Grey with a contented little smile. She looks strangely relaxed, more relaxed then he’s seen her in ages. 

It’s the fact that she appears that relaxed beside the man who tried to kill them both that makes him want to vomit. 

He follows Skye out of Vault D and tries to quell the urge to hit something, but he just can’t. He raises his good fist to the wall across from them, hitting it with a growl and kicking it for good measure. 

“Woah, woah, Fitz,” Skye exclaims, rushing to pull him back. “Calm down.” 

“How can she—she—just…” 

“Look, I know it’s weird,” Skye attempts to soothe. “It’s really weird to me, too. With all the stuff Garner told us, Jemma’s taken a really clinical perspective on it. She’s trying to help him the same way she’s trying to help you.” 

He scoffs. “Hasn’t been to see m—me in days.” 

Skye looks surprised at that. “She’s been really busy, Fitz.” 

“With what?!” he half-yells, and Skye takes a step back. “I’m sorry, it’s jus’—jus’ tha’ I’m not—not used to being ex—ex—“ 

“Excluded?” Skye supplies. He nods vigorously, eyes bright with what she suspects might be tears. 

“She’s going undercover in Hydra,” she blurts out, wincing immediately after the words are out of her mouth. Simmons, Garner, and Coulson all thought it was better if he thought she was visiting her family in England, taking a break. They were gonna kill her when they found out that she told him. 

His entire face goes slack, something flashing in his eyes. He leans forward and puts his hands on his knees, and Skye recognizes the signals of his usual panic attacks. She rushes to him, seating him against the wall and coaching him through breathing until he finally settles. He looks up at her, and now there is no mistaking the tears in his eyes. He blinks them away and stands. 

“I need to be—be—I wanna be alone.” 

She watches him walk away toward the garage and then sets off to the Comms room. The least she can do now is at least do what Simmons asked. 

*** 

“AGH!” Jemma yells, hitting the ground for what feels like the hundredth time in twenty four hours. With her Hydra mission only a week away, her field training occupies most of her time. 

“C’mon, girl,” Trip grins, offering her a hand up. “You gotta come at me harder than that.” 

She gives him an unamused look, gathering her bearings once more before doing exactly as he’d suggested. He blocks most of her attempted hits, but she uses her smaller stature to her advantage, pulling him by the wrist as she slips between his legs. He flips over her, landing on the mat, and she quickly straddles him, forearm to his neck. 

He coughed, the wind knocked out of him. 

“How the hell,” he breathed, “did Dr. Jemma Simmons just lay me out?!” 

She laughs heartily, partially out of her surprise at her own abilities. Suddenly a loud banging noise comes from the lab, causing her to look up. Fitz stands at the table, jaw clenched and a dark look in his eyes. She quickly hops off of Trip and doesn’t even offer him a hand up as she approaches the lab. 

“Simmons, we’re not done here yet!” Trip calls as he pulls himself off the mat. “Aren’t the British supposed to have manners?” he mumbles to himself as he grabs a water bottle. 

“Fitz!” she says cheerily, pushing the button to slide the doors open. “Everything alright?” 

“Just fine, th—thanks,” he grumbles, turning away from her. 

“You seem upset,” she supplies weakly. 

“Not really you—you’re problem, then is—is it?” 

She looks at the ceiling, bouncing her leg as she tries to work through both her adrenaline and the onslaught of hurt that each and every conversation with Fitz comes with these days. 

“You know what, Fitz? You’re right. It’s not my problem. When you’re ready to talk to me like an adult, you know where to find me,” she hisses. He watches Jemma storm out of the lab and immediately re-engage with Trip, delivering blow after blow. 

“Damn, J,” Trip said as he blocked her hits. “What’s gotten into you?” 

She practically growls and delivers a kick to his abdomen that sends him reeling. Another loud noise comes from the lab, and she sees that Fitz has dropped his latest project in shock, staring at her with an unreadable expression before turning his back to the scene and leaving the room. This seems to wake her up and her hands fly to her mouth. 

“Oh, Trip, I’m so sorry!” 

“It’s alright,” he wheezes, giving her an encouraging glance. “But Hydra ain’t gonna know what hit ‘em.” 

She grins a little and collapses back onto the mats in exhaustion. Skye enters the room and Trip nods at her. 

“Alright, ladies, I gotta go rinse off. See y’all later.” 

Skye laughs and waves at him, lying down with her head next to Jemma’s but her body facing the opposite direction. 

“So, I need to tell you something and I need you to not kick my ass like you just did to Trip.” 

“You’re still stronger at hand-to-hand than I am,” Jemma reasons. “And I’m sure it can’t be that bad.” 

“Well, um, I think it is.” 

Jemma’s eyebrows raise as she looks at her friend in apprehension. “Just tell me.” 

“I accidentally told Fitz you’re going undercover,” Skye rapidly spits out. “I’m so sorry, Jemma. I didn’t mean to. He reacted so badly to seeing you with Ward, and it just slipped out. He was saying all this stuff about feeling in the dark, and—“ 

Simmons simply closes her eyes and sighs lightly. “Well that would explain his behavior earlier. Won’t be a fun conversation but perhaps it’s a good thing we have it anyway.” 

“I really am sorry,” Skye mumbles.

“I know,” Simmons says. “I don’t really know how we thought everyone could know except for him. Even if nobody had told him, he’s still a genius. He’d have figured it out eventually, wouldn’t he?” 

“Probably,” Skye admits. “Not that he feels so brilliant these days.” 

“He’s still brilliant, it just doesn’t come as easily as it did before. He’ll adapt.” 

“I hope he adapts sooner rather than later,” Skye replies. “Honestly, the guy has been kind of an ass. Especially to you.” 

“You can’t blame him for that,” Jemma starts to argue. 

“Look, I get it,” Skye cuts her off. “You’re willing to protect that guy with everything you have no matter how many shitty things he says to you. I know you feel guilty about what happened to him, but he blew out that window. He expected to die. And now he acts like you ruined him by keeping him alive.” 

“I can’t expect you to understand,” Jemma whispers after a moment. “People like us, we’re so used to everything just…clicking. Fitz and I, we’re able to understand things way beyond even our own fields. To lose that after a lifetime of most things coming impossibly easy…I can’t even imagine. And I did that to him. Sure, he’s alive, but I don’t blame him for blaming me. I don’t blame him for being angry. But for whatever reason, being around me, it only makes him worse. He pities himself, he’s angrier, more aggressive. When I’m gone, he’ll be able to focus that energy on himself. If he can’t get better, he’ll at least learn to adapt.” 

“Alright, Dr. Garner,” Skye says wryly. “Any other analysis you have?” 

“I’m proud of you,” Simmons says suddenly. “For getting in there with me, with Ward.” 

“Honestly, Simmons, if you can do it, then I should be able to.” 

“I didn’t love him, Skye.” 

Skye opens her mouth to deny it, but bites her lip instead. “Is it screwed up that I feel bad for him? Looking at him in that cell, in that outfit. The way he’s afraid of everything, even of himself?” 

“Not at all,” Jemma assures her. “It makes you human.” 

“I guess. Sometimes I wish I could be a little more inhuman.” 

“No, you don’t,” Jemma says gently. “I’ve always been a pragmatist, Skye. My professional relationship with Dr. Garner is allowing me to finally access more knowledge about things that aren’t so logical, like my emotions and why I feel them. But you, you’ve always been wildly compassionate. You’ve always wanted to help people, and you’ve always believed in second chances.” 

“This just feels like a really, really big second chance,” Skye whispers, voice shaking. 

“I know it does,” Jemma says, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “But if anyone can figure out how to give that to him, it’s you.” 

They lay in comfortable silence after that, hands clasped awkwardly between their faces. 

“Fitz told me he had feelings for me,” Simmons finally admits, breaking the silence. Skye drops her hand and looks at her immediately. 

“No way. What happened?” 

Jemma takes a deep breath. “He had figured out how to blow the window, and rigged the oxygen tank to release one pressurized breath. I told him that we had to find another plan, because he was my best friend in the world. And he told me I was more than that, and that he hadn’t had the courage to tell me, so wouldn’t I please let him show me.” 

“Oh my god,” Skye breathes. “What did you---“ 

“I didn’t say anything. I was crying already, and trying to wrap my mind around it. I hugged him as tight as I could cause I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t comprehend that we were having this conversation in a med pod at the bottom of the ocean after ten years of friendship and partnership.” 

“The guy tries to die for you and he doesn’t even get a smooch?” At Jemma’s unamused look, Skye retracts. “Sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Jemma says. “I was kissing him all over his face, working up the courage to do it for real, and he pulled back and gave me this…this utterly defeated smile, and then he hit the button.” 

There are tears in her voice as she describes the scene, and Skye can almost see it, can physically hear the pain in Jemma’s voice. 

“Then the water was rushing in, and the breath was being pushed into me. So I grabbed him and I swam as hard as I could with only one hand, dragging him up with me. We were in the water, so I couldn’t even try to perform CPR right away, there was nothing sturdy to lay him against. If I had been thinking, or if he had given me time, I could have strapped him to the board that kept us from breaking all of our bones when we fell—“ 

“But he didn’t think that far ahead,” Skye finishes. “Wasn’t even thinking about how to get himself out.” 

“Exactly,” Jemma sighs. “And now here we are. Hardly speaking to one another, so much anger and guilt and blame between us.” 

“Is he more than that to you, too?” Skye asks softly. 

Jemma bites her lip. “You know, I felt that way for him for a long time, but I didn’t want to ruin it. Fitz falls easily for just about anyone who gives him a pretty smile. All through the academy, he had these crushes on girls who hardly gave him the time of day, and even if they had, he’d have been hardly able to speak in front of them. He dated a girl at SciOps, and I finally started to realize he didn’t feel the same. When we got the assignment for the Bus, I thought maybe it would be our chance, maybe he’d see me differently without the distractions of others. Then you came along, and—“ 

“Oh god,” Skye groans. “Jemma, I’m so sorry.” 

Jemma smiles sadly. “It’s not your fault, Skye. Poor Fitz, tripping over himself trying to impress you. So I did what I do best, I compartmentalized and archived my feelings for him as something no longer worth examining, and it worked. Having him love me as a friend, as a partner—that became enough because I needed it to be.” 

“So you’re going into the belly of the beast,” Skye says. “For him.” 

Jemma nods. “For him.” 

“Because you’d do anything for him,” Skye repeats, sitting up. Jemma follows suit and Skye immediately wraps her in a hug, holding on to her as tightly as she can. Jemma sinks into it, forgetting how long it’s been since she’s had this kind of contact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that I'm not rushing through Ward's redemption. We'll see more of what that means for Skye and Fitz later, as well. I'm also going to start bringing the newer characters in, as well as May and Coulson. So far this story has veered into a very Bus-Kids-centric thing, which I don't really mind. I do love the other characters though, and want them to be a part of it as well. 
> 
> Next time, we'll finally get to see a Fitz and Simmons confrontation. Fitz is going to get some unsolicited advice from Trip and Hunter, and Fitz will have a conversation with Ward.


	6. bury me 'till i confess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fitz gets a push he needs from Hunter and Mack, has a midnight talk with Jemma, and faces the ghost in the basement.

Fitz storms into the garage, throwing open the mini fridge that Mack keeps under the tool bench and cracking open a beer, which he promptly begins to chug. Mack and Hunter look up from their conversation with raised eyebrows, waiting for the engineer to notice them. He finally does as he wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. 

“Did you two know? That Jem—Simmons, is uh, she’s going to be, uh…” he can’t seem to find the word, and he waves his hand around in desperation. 

“Undercover in Hydra,” Hunter finishes dryly. Mack shoots him an annoyed glance at his bluntness before turning back to Fitz. 

“Yeah, we were all briefed on her assignment, Turbo.” 

“I can’t—can’t believe it.” 

“I’m not the best at relationships. I went off and married a demonic hell-beast. But I do know what it’s like to care about someone in danger, mate,” Hunter says. Mack can’t help the snort that comes out of him. “What?!” 

“Sorry, just a little weird to hear you talk about caring about someone.” 

Hunter just rolls his eyes, not looking affronted in the slightest. “Yeah, well. Not exactly my fault that I was taken in by a succubus. They can make you believe just about anything.” 

“I told her how I felt,” Fitz blurts after a long sip from his second beer. “And she didn’t feel the same—same way. So now she’s uh, she’s leaving.” 

“I dunno, Turbo,” Mack supplies. “I don’t think that’s why she’s leaving.” 

“Besides which, have you ever gone and just asked her how she felt? You can’t just go blurting out these things in the middle of a hostile take over, you prat,” Hunter says. “The first time I proposed to Bob—I mean, Satan’s most loyal minion--it was in the middle of a firefight. She about kicked my ass for that.” 

Fitz swallows hard. “I don’t need to ask. I already have—have my answer.” 

“You don’t if you’ve never asked her. I don’t know you all that well, kid, but—“ 

“I’m like, two years younger than you,” Fitz interjects in protest. 

Hunter rolls his eyes again. “Whatever. I’m just saying, it doesn’t hurt to ask.” 

Fitz looks at him incredulously, and Mack jumps in to amend the other man’s words. “Alright, it might hurt. It won’t kill you, though, and it could put you out of your misery regardless.” 

Fitz leans back, clenching and unclenching his bad hand in a tell-tale sign of his nervous habit. 

“Hey, didn’t Dr. Cho say that playing video games can help with that?” Mack asks, nodding toward Fitz’s hand. Fitz grumbles an affirmative, and Hunter grins, turning his chair toward the TV in the corner and tossing Fitz a controller, which clatters to the floor. 

“Not the best reflexes these days,” Fitz grumbles as he bends down to pick it up. He takes another swig of beer and settles in to play a game of Call of Duty with the new recruits. He finds it easier to be around them, feeling no pressure to be the Fitz of the Academy, or SciOps, or the Bus. He can just be who he is now, and Hunter and Mack are perfectly alright with not forcing him to talk about the way his new inadequacies make him feel. It’s a welcome respite from his meetings with Garner and from the pressure that Coulson has on him to start working on the cloaking technology for the quinjet. 

As he plays, his mind wanders to Hunter’s advice. He’s not sure when Jemma is leaving for Hydra, but if he doesn’t talk to her first, he may never know why she’s leaving, or if it’s because of what happened in the med pod. The anger he feels tells him that she’s leaving because he’s broken and no use to her anymore, and as it overwhelms him, it becomes more and more difficult to quiet that part of his mind. He makes up his mind to talk to her at some point that day. 

***

Jemma sighs into her mug of tea, curled into the corner of the common area sofa where the clock reads nearly midnight. Ever since her conversation with Skye that afternoon, she hasn’t been able to take her mind off of anything else. With only six days until her departure for Hydra, her nerves feel like wild ivy growing in her stomach, latching onto every part of her. 

“Jemma.” 

The familiar Scottish brogue stiffens her spine, and she looks up to find Fitz staring down at her. His eyes drift to her shirt, an old MIT shirt of his that she had nicked from him at the Academy, and his expression softens ever so slightly before hardening again. 

“Hello, Fitz.” 

He appears unsure of what to do with himself, standing at the other side of the couch and fidgeting nervously with the sleeves of his jumper. 

“Why didn’t you, uh, tell me? About going undercover.” 

Jemma places her mug on the coffee table, steadying herself before beginning. “Coulson thought it might impede your recovery.” 

“Why are you—why are you leaving?” 

“They need someone undercover in the science division, Fitz. I’m the best person for the job. We already have an agent deep into security and she’ll also be in the division, watching out for me. I can’t know who she is, but Coulson has the utmost confidence in her. So does May.” 

“How can you do this?” he says angrily. There is no stutter in his voice and she’s nearly proud of him for it, but the hurt clenching her heart can’t allow it. “How can you just leave me here like that?”

She opens her mouth to reply, but no sound comes out and he continues his tirade. 

“Now that I’m of no use to—to you, might as well just leave me behind then!” 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she practically spits, standing to face him head on. “Has it occurred to you, Fitz, that you can talk to just about anyone on this base except for me? Have you thought about why that is?” 

He freezes, taking in her words and beginning to slowly shake his head. 

Jemma scoffs. “Well I have! I’m the only damn thing in this place that makes you worse. I meant what I said in that med pod. You are my best friend in the world, whether you want to be or not.” 

“I meant—meant what I said, uh, said too, you know,” Fitz growls, taking a few steps toward her. She plants her feet, refusing to back away. “You’re more than that, Jemma.” 

She runs both hands through her unbrushed hair, trying to ignore the way they’re both shaking with the weight of this conversation. “And where was that ten years ago, Fitz? When I had to watch you trip all over Natalie, stumble and stutter with Faith, obsess over Elizabeth and then fall head over heels for that receptionist at SciOps who was always in the way in our lab?!” 

“Wh—what are you talking about? What are you trying to uh, trying to say, Simmons?” 

“I’m saying, Fitz,” Jemma practically chokes, tears in her throat, “that you were the only person who interested me for ten bloody years and you hardly stopped to notice that I was even female. Then we got on the Bus and I thought maybe there was hope for us, but no, then Skye came and I was practically invisible to you, just a sounding board to show off your intelligence for her!” 

Fitz physically recoils, stepping away from her. “No. No. That’s not—that’s not right.” 

Tears are in her eyes now and she looks at the ceiling to hold them back. “You don’t get to tell me how I feel. How I felt all those years. You suddenly decide you have feelings for me and now I’m the one who kicked your puppy.” 

“I never meant—meant to hurt you, Jemma.” 

“I know you didn’t, Fitz,” she whispers. “I never thought that and I don’t think it now. But you obviously think I am trying to hurt you. There’s nothing I can do to convince you that I don’t need you to be the way you were before. I can’t imagine how hard this has been for you. They need someone in Hydra, and you need me to not be here. The solution is obvious.” 

“You could get yourself---get yourself killed out there.” 

Jemma bites her lip but nods slowly. “I could. But I’ve been training hard. Long hours, working my best to make sure that won’t happen. There’s always a chance, but I’ve done everything I can to reduce the likelihood of that and so has Coulson.” 

“We’re never going to be—be the same, are we?” Fitz asks hoarsely. Jemma looks at him with sad caramel eyes and he feels the anger bleed out of him. 

“I’m not sure, Fitz.” 

“I hate change.” 

“I know you do,” she chuckles softly. The sound is strangely warm and he hasn’t heard it in so long. The feeling of it overcomes him and he steps forward and pulls her to his chest, one hand going to the back of her head. 

“I’m sorry, you know.” 

“I know you are, Fitz. And I’m sorry, too, for more than you can possibly understand.” 

“It’s okay that you don’t—that you don’t feel the same as me. You don’t have to, uh, have to leave. I’ll move—move on.” 

She steps back from him and places a hand on his face. “Fitz, I don’t know how I feel now. When I try to think of it, it’s all so wrapped up in guilt and blame and hurt. But also nostalgia and understanding and so many other things. I should only be in Hydra for two months. And I think in that time you need to do your best to recover. And I’ll do my best to recover. And when I come back, we can see, if maybe there is something here that we can salvage.” 

“Something we can—can make uh, can make better.” 

Jemma nods emphatically, stepping forward to kiss his forehead. 

“Be careful, Jemma,” he chokes, gripping the sides of her shirt. 

“I will, Fitz.” 

She gives him a watery smile and walks back toward her bunk, leaving him alone in the common area with her words whirling around him. 

***   
He can’t stop the shaking in his band hand as he descends the staircase into Vault D. The breath he’s holding is released when he sees that the barrier is back up in Ward’s cell. Ward sits on the floors, back to the wall with a book in his hand. Fitz can see the cover. It’s Harry Potter, and he’s reading the second installment. 

“Ward,” Fitz greets, his voice gravelly in the silence. Ward’s eyes shoot up from the page at the sound of his accent and he stiffens. 

“Fitz.” 

“So I guess uh, you’ve been seeing---seeing Simmons quite a bit.” 

Ward nods slowly. “She comes down for advice. Sometimes we talk through some stuff. Sometimes we talk about these,” he says, lifting the book cover toward Fitz. 

“Her favor—favorite is uh, the fourth one. Once you start that she’ll never, um, never shut up about it.” 

Ward shrugs. “I like when she talks. Puts me at ease.” 

“Has Skye been coming down—down here?” 

Ward nods more hesitantly this time. “Last night, before bed, she came down to play a game of Battleship. We don’t talk much other than the game.” 

“What you did to her, it uh, it really broke something in her,” Fitz says, and watches Ward’s eyes darken. It’s not the same darkness he saw as the pod fell out of the sky, but he continues to look for it. 

“I know. I’m not a good man. And I’m willing to spend the rest of my life down here if it helps her. If it helps all of you.” 

“What would you do?” Fitz finally asks after nearly a minute of silence. “If you were—if we were the ones—or if I---“ 

Ward can tell what he’s trying to say and holds a palm up, indicating that he can stop struggling to find the words. “I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t be able to forgive. At least not for a long time. I honestly didn’t expect any of you to be as…caring, as you’ve been toward me. I’m being treated as human. I don’t know if I would have been able to do that. But I’m learning a lot of new things about myself, so maybe I could.” 

“I think I—I could have been like you,” Fitz admits. “I told that—that kid, at the Academy. Ya know, the one with the um, the ice machine? If I hadn’t met Simmons. I think it woulda—woulda been real easy for someone to take my um, my isolation. And turn it into something—something dangerous.” 

Ward looks at him curiously and gives him a closed smile. “Good luck for you that Simmons found you, instead of Garrett.” 

Fitz nods. “Sometimes I wish she—she hadn’t. Think she’d be better off.” 

“She’d probably hit you if she heard you say that. I can practically hear it. Fitz!” he exclaims, imitating Jemma’s voice. It draws a surprised laugh from Fitz, and Ward smiles back at him. 

“I still don’t get why she’s, why she’s going,” Fitz grumbles. “Before all this, I coulda—coulda gone with her, you know? But she’ll be a—alone.” 

Ward looks at him seriously. “She’s much more capable than you realize. Don’t underestimate her. She’ll come back in one piece. I know she will.” 

“I need to know something,” Fitz blurts out, words nearly running together with the pace of his speech. 

“What’s that?” 

“If they find out about her—what’ll they do to her?” 

“Fitz, I don’t think—“ 

“You owe me this,” Fitz practically growls, and Ward closes his eyes with a wince. 

“You’re right. Okay. If they find her, they won’t kill her right away. She’s got too valuable a brain and has been too close to Coulson for too long. They’ll probably try to beat some stuff out of her first. There’s also a good chance that they would take somebody she cares about before she even realizes she’s been made, and hold them there to make her turn sides. Your partnership, it’s notorious. While she’s undercover, you’ll probably be watched 24/7 by someone here, to make sure they don’t use you against her.” 

Fitz grits his teeth but nods in understanding. “And if they can’t do that?” 

“I was telling Simmons…a favorite is needles under the finger nails. There are rumors of brainwashing. Not like the Garrett conditioning kind, but literal brainwashing. They make you watch some tape over and over again. I’ve heard of some instances of waterboarding, some starvation and some forced exhaustion.” 

Fitz feels his eyes burn as images of these things happening to Simmons race through his head like a slideshow of a car crash. 

“Okay that’s enough,” he says weakly. “Thank you.” 

Ward looks at him cautiously. “Are you okay? You look a little green.” 

“It’s just—you know?” 

Ward nods. “I do know. When Skye got shot, after that—it was hard to get it out of my head. Or to stop picturing the worst case scenarios.” 

Fitz makes a sound of understanding before standing shakily. “I’ll probably uh—probably be by again. If that’s alright.” 

“Definitely. That’s fine. I would like that.” 

“I hope you—hope you find some peace, Ward.” 

“Thanks, Fitz.” 

When he leaves Vault D, he wants so badly to run to Simmons and hold her again, draw the same strength from it that he did last night. But something in him tells him not to, and he seeks Skye instead. He finds her clicking away on a laptop in the Comms room and is greeted with a smile when she sees him in the doorway. 

“Hey there,” she chirps. “What’s up?” 

“I just came from uh—from seeing Ward.” 

“Oh,” Skye says, smile slipping from her face. “How was that?” 

“It was—it was okay. I think. Not really…not really sure.” 

Skye puts her hand on his arm in understanding. “I know. I’m not really sure how to feel about any of it either. But I will say, interacting with him and talking it all out with Garner—it’s lifted some of the weight. A lot of the weight, actually. I’m starting to let go of it, finally. I’m not sure if Coulson is ever going to let him out, let him be part of the team again, but I’ve caught him leaving the Vault a few times.” 

“I talked to Simmons last night, too.” 

Skye’s chatty countenance dissolves quickly into silence. “What did you talk about?” 

“She’s leaving because—because she thinks she makes me worse,” he explains, sitting down in a chair next to her and putting his elbows on his knees. “She uh, she used to have feelings for me, too, I guess. Bloody idiot I was for not—not seeing that.” 

Skye squeezes his shoulder. “She told me about that yesterday. And back when we were at the Academy for Donnie and his ice machine, she told me that you were the only person that ever interested her.” 

She watches a muscle twitch in his jaw. “I can’t—can’t believe I’ve uh, I’ve lost her like this.” 

“Woah, woah, woah,” Skye interrupts. “You have not lost her. She’s going to be gone for a couple of months, and then she’ll be back. And you two can try to start over. You can get back your partnership, and then eventually, maybe, you can build something more than that.” 

“What if she doesn’t—“ he can’t finish the sentence, emotion grabbing at his throat. 

“She will,” Skye says fiercely, kneeling in front of him. “May and Trip and Coulson, they’ve all been training her. Even Ward has given her every bit of information he can to make sure she walks out of there.” 

“I can’t live without her, Skye.” 

Skye licks her lips and purses them together before responding. “You can, though. That’s the whole point of this. Well, okay, not the whole point. She’s also going to be a badass and get us some valuable information on Hydra’s weapons technology.” 

“Garner says we’re uh—we’re unlearning some of our codep—codependency problems.” 

“Exactly, Fitz. You are. That way, moving forward, you two can have a healthier version of what you had.” 

“We were never unhealthy!” Fitz yelps in protest. Skye pegs him with a look. 

“What’s the longest you’ve ever been apart from each other?” 

“Well, we didn’t see each other for two weeks, at the—the start of the Academy. For holidays.” 

“Which was when?” 

“Ten years ago,” Fitz grumbles. Skye grins triumphantly. 

“Exactly, my friend. Trust me, you two are going to be fine. You’re FitzSimmons for God’s sake.” 

“We’re FitzSimmons,” he mutters to himself, and it sounds like a prayer. She gives him a reassuring squeeze. 

“Wanna help me try to dig up some more dirt on this Creel guy?” Skye diverts. 

“Yeah, okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was extremely Fitz-centric, which I think was needed. Next time, Jemma leaves for Hydra, Coulson makes a controversial decision, and the rest of the team goes on their first real mission since the fall of SHIELD. After that, there might be some jumping around on the timeline. 
> 
> As always, feedback is greatly appreciated!


	7. it's just a fond farewell to a friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma says her goodbyes, Skye and Ward have an honest conversation, and Coulson takes a chance on his team.

The days fly by quickly, and Jemma finds herself double-checking her suitcase that she will be taking to her new apartment near Hydra’s science headquarters, still disguised as Ian Quinn’s Cybertek. When she is finally satisfied with the efficiency of her packing, she zips the bag and wheels it outside of her bunk. 

“Simmons,” the quiet voice of May comes from down the hall. “A word, please.” 

She nods at her S.O. (at least, she thinks May is her S.O., those kinds of protocols had been largely lost in the Hydra takeover while Coulson tried to rebuild) and follows her to the briefing room. 

“Let’s go over your cover one more time.” 

“I’d like to be here for this, too,” Coulson says from the doorway, joining the two women. He and May exchange a look and Jemma is stricken with how similar May and Coulson are to the way she and Fitz used to be. Their nonverbal communication, and often bickering, had lead Skye to begin speculating very early on that they were secretly married. 

“Okay,” Jemma says, her voice thin. 

“What is your name?” 

“Dr. Jemma Simmons,” she responds easily. At least she did not have to change that about herself. 

“Why are you here, Dr. Simmons?” 

“After the fall of SHIELD, it’s been very difficult for me to find employment. Most private laboratories don’t have the resources that I require to continue my line of work, and the loss of my partner has made me unattached to any remaining SHIELD operatives.” 

“So your partner, Leo Fitz. Where is he?” 

Jemma straightens her shoulders and meets May’s eyes as she answers the question. “Leo is dead.” 

“How did he die?” 

“During the fall of SHIELD.” 

“How can we be sure that you won’t attempt to avenge his death during your time in Hydra, Dr. Simmons?” Coulson jumps in, tone detached.   
“He was killed by a SHIELD agent, sir,” Jemma says with a hardened voice. 

“Where do your loyalties lie?” May asks. 

“With science,” Jemma answers after an appropriate pause. Her tendency to talk over the ends of sentences had been teased out of her speech by May over the last few weeks. “My loyalties are with science.” 

Coulson and May exchange another glance. “I think you’re ready, Dr. Simmons,” Coulson says. He seems reluctant to admit it, and Jemma finds herself contemplating Coulson’s position in this entire Hydra debacle. With Ward in Vault D, Fitz’s injuries, Skye becoming May’s protégé, and Simmons entering the belly of the beast, it’s as if all of his younger team members have changed entirely overnight. Jemma supposes that they all have. Ward’s power is now gone, Fitz’s sharp mind and agile hands are slowed, her inability to lie and fight is now gone, and Skye’s boisterous, quirky behavior is muted, a dull echo of the way she used to be on the Bus. 

“We’ve got you set up in an apartment a few blocks away from Hydra HQ. Do you remember your dead drop location?” 

Jemma nods. “In the park, near the old auditorium.” 

“Good,” Coulson says, handing her a tablet as he leads her and May on a walk toward the garage, where she will be departing in a nondescript sedan. “I may be paying you a couple of visits in your apartment as it comes. It’s equipped with everything you’ll need for cooking and training. There’s some weights, a treadmill, and there’s also a punching bag in the hall closet.” 

“Great,” Jemma tries to chirp, but it falls flat. Her nerves are twisting up in her stomach, and they only get worse when she sees that Skye is waiting for them at the end of the hall. Her friend walks briskly to her, throwing her arms around Jemma’s neck and squeezing tightly. 

“I’m really proud of you, Simmons,” Skye mumbles into Jemma’s short hair. 

“Thank you, Skye.” 

“And if you get yourself killed, I will engineer some GH-325 myself and bring your ass back so I can kill you again,” Skye teases, but her eyes are glassy and her voice choked. 

“You could never just engineer—“ Jemma begins to argue, before rolling her eyes at herself. “Right, I get it. Not the point.” 

“Oh Simmons,” Skye says fondly. “What am I going to do here without you?” 

“Well, I’ve got some good news. We’re going after Creel tomorrow morning. Briefing at 0100,” Coulson tells her with a bemused smile on his face.

“Yes!” she squeals, pumping a fist in the air. “I’m stoked to try out my new zen warrior moves.” 

May rolls her eyes at that, and hands Jemma her purse full of variously disguised espionage items. “I trust that you remember what they all do.” 

Jemma nods. “Yes, I do.” 

Suddenly, May pulls her into a hug. “Do good, Simmons.” 

Nearly as quickly as it happens, it is over, and she continues her shuffle to the garage. She bumps fists with Trip and receives his wink with a flushed smile, receives a brief hug from Coulson, and shakes hands with Hunter, Izzy, and Mack. There’s only one person missing from her send off and the thought of not seeing him before she leaves makes bile rise to the back of her throat. 

And then she spots him, leaning against the trunk of her early-2000s white sedan, arms crossed around himself and wearing the blue cardigan she’s always loved on him. Without thinking about it, she dashes toward him and throws herself into his arms, knocking him back against the car. After a moment, his arms come up around her and she feels him take a shaky breath into her hair. 

“Only—only two months,” he mumbles. She nods as firmly as she can, swallowing the lump impeding her throat. 

“I’ll see you in two months,” she replies, placing a kiss on his cheek. She feels him shiver and bites back the butterflies that rise up in her. She grabs his face and looks him straight in the eyes. “You’ll be careful?” 

“That should be, uh, that should be—be my line,” he jokes with a shrug. She grins at him, blinking back the tears from her eyes, and accepts the car keys from Mack. 

“Well, then, this is it,” Jemma says as she opens the door to get in. She looks at the crowd in the garage, familiar faces and some newer ones. She briefly flashes back to the day they met Skye, and marvels at how much even the familiar faces have changed. She hopes they won’t have changed too much again before she gets back, and with a wave, she gets into the car and turns it on. Reaching for the knob on the stereo, she takes in a deep breath and does her best not to watch the rearview mirror as she undertakes her first ever undercover mission. 

***   
A few hours later, Skye finds herself sitting across from Ward. She usually only comes down to play games with him, but this time, there is no task to occupy them. 

“She left this morning,” Skye says quietly. 

Ward nods. “She came by to tell me.” 

“The whole idea of this is that her being gone will make Fitz get better,” Skye tells him, ignoring the way he flinches at the mention of Fitz’s injury. “But what if it doesn’t? What if he only gets worse?” 

Ward shrugs. “There’s no way to know that other than time running its course.” 

Skye shakes her head. “I just don’t know that separating those two for an extended period of time will ever be good news. She’s only been gone for like, three hours, and he’s been holed up in his bunk ever since.” 

“He needs to process. It’s good that he knows where she is. It probably doesn’t seem like it now, but that will help. Honestly.” 

“Sounds like you have some experience with that,” Skye says offhandedly, still failing to hide her blatant curiosity. 

“My little sister,” he supplies. “Rosie. Well, Rose technically. When my parents sent me off to military school, they told her that I ran away. When I eventually tried to make contact with her, once I was in the Spec-Ops Academy, there was too much doubt there. She didn’t really believe that I hadn’t run away. She felt like I’d abandoned her with our parents and our older brother.” 

“Did your brother…treat Rosie like he treated you?” 

Ward clenches his jaw, and Skye almost regrets asking, but this is what Garner wants her to do. He wants her to “do the work”, to try to better understand the person that Ward is and how he became that way. Skye tries to look at it the same way she looks at computer coding and viruses. Sometimes, you can save the hard drive. There’s just a lot of twisted garble to get through first. 

“He didn’t. At least not while I was there. But apparently, some stuff happened while I was gone. She only talks to my other brother now.” 

“The one from the well?” she asks. He nods in confirmation. “How old is Rosie?” 

“She’s nineteen now. Just a kid still.” 

Skye’s eyes widen at that. “Wow, she’s a lot younger than you.” 

Ward laughs. “I’m not that old, Skye.” 

“Old enough,” she retorts. Her face becomes serious again. “You know, with all of this Hydra bad blood, and especially if you regain your agent status, it might be a good idea if I have tabs on her. Nothing noticeable, just if I can keep track of where she’s at.” 

Ward looks at her gratefully. “I’ve been---I’ve honestly been really worried about her. Worried they might try to take her as an incentive.” 

Skye gives him a small smile. “Well, we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ll get a track on her and then let Coulson know, in case we ever need to give her a security detail.” 

“I doubt he’d allow that.” 

Skye gives him a soft look. “We’re not okay with what happened, Ward. But we’re all trying. And we do understand better than you think. The reason we’re all here is because SHIELD recognized us as people with particular skills and a distinct lack of belonging. You just got swept up by the wrong guy.” 

“Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have known better.” 

Skye places a hand on his leg and forces him to look at her before she speaks again. “Ward, you were what, fifteen? Sixteen years old? How were you supposed to know that the person offering you a lifeline was offering you a life sentence?” 

His eyes become grateful, and somewhat pained. 

“Ruining this, ruining my relationship with the team—it was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.” 

“We know,” Skye says evenly, giving his leg a squeeze. “We’ve got a briefing in 20, and I wanna get some leads on Rosie before I have to report in. Anything you need?” 

Ward gestures to his books. “I’m good. Thanks.” 

“Alright,” she says, hopping up. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

He watches her go back up the staircase, and imagines his sister the last time he saw her. Scrawny limbs and all elbows, dark brown hair hanging around her pale face. Anger in her brown eyes. 

He shakes himself and picks up the fourth Harry Potter book. He feels a pang of sadness when he remembers that Fitz told him it was Jemma’s favorite. He considers his pile and puts the Goblet of Fire down, opting for To Kill a Mockingbird instead. He’ll wait to read that one until he Jemma is back to discuss it with him. 

 

At exactly 0100, Coulson enters the briefing room and looks up at all of his agents. Fitz and Mack stand off to the side, he notes gladly. He had a sneaking suspicion when he first brought Mack onto the team that he and Fitz would get on. Hunter is close by as well, grouped off closer to Izzy and Idaho. Skye and May are standing very close together, nearly touching, and he realizes how far their relationship has come since the fall of Hydra. He clears his throat and begins, using his tablet to pull up the footage Skye found of Creel. 

“We have reason to believe that Creel is in Washington, D.C. Skye got a positive ID that this is him, spotted near the National Mall on a security camera. I’m not sure what he’s doing in the Capitol, but my only guess is that it can’t be good for us. Skye tracked a pattern—it looks as though he strolls the same path every day, and winds up right out front of the Capitol building at exactly 12 p.m., when most Congressmen are heading out for lunch. Tomorrow, we’ll be there to meet him.” 

“Mission objective?” May asks tersely. He nods at her. 

“Mission objective is to bring him in, get him on the Index, and keep him off of Hydra’s radar.” 

He notices May’s raised eyebrows and his shoulders slump slightly. “If he becomes a threat, he will need to be neutralized.” 

“So he’s mostly wanted alive but will be accepted dead,” Hunter snarks. “Alright, boss.” 

Izzy rolls her eyes at him. “Don’t mind him, he’s an ass when he skips lunch.” 

“May and Trip will be running point, with Izzy, Idaho, and Hunter as backup. And Skye will be running backup and comms from a van, analyzing possible energy signatures.” 

“C’mon, AC,” Skye whines. “I’m seriously like, full-combat ready now.” 

May raises one eyebrow. “She’s not lying.” 

“I can—I can uh, run analysis,” Fitz offers, twisting his hands in his sleeves. 

“I think Skye is best suited for this mission, Agent Fitz.” 

Hunter scoffs at that, a bit defensively. Mack shifts as well. 

“Will all due respect, I think Turbo is in good enough shape to play around on a laptop. And Skye’s not a quantum physicist, but my boy is,” Mack interrupts. 

May examines the entire team and looks to Coulson. “Give him a chance, Phil.” 

His eyes narrow. “Fine. Fitz and Mack in the van running comms and analysis. Skye will be with May and Trip.” 

Skye lets out a whoop of victory and Mack gives Fitz a hardy pat on the shoulder, receiving a shaky smile in return. 

“Don’t celebrate too soon. You two have until tomorrow morning to fix the cloaking device.” 

The smile slips from Fitz’s face and Mack lets out a low groan. “Better get started, Turbo.” 

“Hey Fitz, a word please,” Coulson says as the team begins to trickle out. Fitz anxiously steps back and Coulson looks to May, expecting her to leave, but she simply plants her feet and settles in for the conversation. 

“Yes, sir?” 

“I didn’t know if you felt ready for active duty or not,” Coulson explains. “Dr. Cho told me that you had been making major progress before she left, but with Simmons gone—“ 

“Simmons leaving, it uh—it won’t affect my work, sir.” 

Coulson looked at him calculatingly, and Fitz could feel May’s gaze burning into the side of his face. 

“I just want you to know that I wasn’t purposefully excluding you from this mission,” Coulson finally says after a long moment. 

May steps toward Fitz as well. “We’re here for you, Fitz. Especially with Simmons undercover and Skye shifting more heavily to Operations. We just want you to know that.” 

“Thank you,” he mumbles, looking at his feet. “I uh, I appreciate it. And I’ll do my uh, my best not to—to let you or the te-team down.” 

Fitz feels a bit like a child being talked to by his parents, and it both annoys him and makes his chest tighten pleasantly. He supposes that’s pretty much how most kids feel when their parents get sentimental, and he wonders when they had all started caring so much about each other. 

He’d started caring about Simmons, actually caring about her, about a month in to their partnership. Her parents had to put her childhood dog Marie down (named by Jemma, at age six, after Marie Curie), and she hadn’t been there to say goodbye. It had devastated her, and watching her cry in a pair of old sweatpants had felt strangely crushing to his seventeen year old self. He’d let her spend several hours telling him every good, bad, and silly story about her adventures with her dog, and by the time she finally fell asleep, he was glad to see her without tears on her face anymore. After that, it had felt like his every instinct for the next 10 years involved some aspect of caring for Jemma. 

May had been the one to recruit Jemma and Fitz to the team, and she had utterly terrified him. But right before they’d gotten on the plane, she’d noticed his hands shaking. He had been attempting to hide it from Jemma, not wanting to sully her excitement for their new assignment by worrying about him, but of course Super Spy Melinda May took one look at him and knew that he would rather be sucked into the ground then step foot on the Bus. She’d pulled him aside and confidently explained to him that, while she was “just a pilot”, she would not let anything happen to him, or to his partner, in the field. There were, of course, times that she had no choice but to break that promise, but he’d come to see the stoic woman as a steadfast force of protection. And when he’d shot a man to save her life, he couldn’t regret it. 

Coulson’s charm was quick at breaking through Fitz’s generally prickly demeanor. He shared some of the same geeky passions that Fitz did, and after a long-winded conversation with him over a couple of beers discussing the pros and cons of different superpowers, he’d decided that Coulson was the kind of man to stand behind. 

Ward had taken longer. It wasn’t until he’d gotten his hands on that Asgardian staff that Fitz had started to really care for the specialist. At first he hadn’t particularly liked him, or the way that Jemma tittered around him like a clumsy, vapid butterfly. But once Jemma had gotten over the sharp lines of his cheekbones and Ward proved himself as more than just a robot, Fitz had changed his mind. Their undercover operation had solidified the bond that Fitz felt toward him, and his admiration for Ward grew with each day. Obviously, that relationship had taken a major hit, but he still felt a familiar pang of concern when he saw Ward in his drab prisoner’s uniform, stuck down in Vault D. When he’d heard the full story of Garrett’s manipulations, he couldn’t help but pity Ward for what he’d been through as a teenager. Fitz still wasn’t really sure how to feel about Ward, his feelings for him a muddled mix of anger, pity, betrayal, and a fraternal kind of love that he just couldn’t shake. 

Skye endeared herself to him immediately, and just as Jemma suspected, he’d had a raging crush on her during her first couple of weeks on the Bus. The thought of it now made him wince at his own stupidity, both because it had hurt Jemma and also because Skye was like the annoying younger sister he’d never asked for but loved regardless. Her optimism and positivity had charmed him, and her computer science skills had earned his respect as a peer and a teammate. 

Of course, now everything was different. He says his goodbyes to May and Coulson and departed for the garage. With less than 24 hours to fix the cloaking device, he and Mack would need to seriously rise to the occasion. He flexs his bad hand, takes a deep breath, and follows the sounds of Mack, Hunter, and Trip’s laughter. 

He’ll get it done, with Mack’s help and with Hunter and Trip’s company, and then he’ll go on his first mission since the accident. He’d been getting better, and he would keep getting better. And if some things were different forever, then they’d have to be different forever. 

As Hunter began immediately ribbing him for his strangely paternal relationships with May and Coulson, he decides that maybe different isn’t the worst thing that could happen to him. He’d always liked a challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone enjoyed this update! It's challenging to ramp up to the good stuff, cause this story is really relationship-based. 
> 
> Next chapter, we'll see a month-long time jump. SHIELD's new team unexpectedly runs into Simmons in the field, and when it's over, there are questions of whether or not her cover is still in tact.


	8. howling ghosts (they reappear)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulson's new team members criticize his decision to release Ward from Vault D, Skye makes a tough call, and nobody notices what's going on with Fitz.

“You’ve got to be joking!” Hunter exclaims loudly, gesturing wildly toward Ward, who stands in the briefing room with the rest of the team. “You’ve let out Hydra psycho?” 

Ward’s eyes lower for a moment before he puffs out a breath of air and squares his shoulders. 

“I’ve already explained the situation,” Coulson says evenly. “If you don’t like it, Hunter, you can leave.” 

“I agree with him,” Mack cuts in. “He almost killed Fitz and Simmons, sir.” 

“The pod was supposed to float!” Skye unexpectedly interrupts. Ward’s eyes widen and he shoots her a grateful glance. “You wanna tell me you have no skeletons in your closet? We’re SHIELD! We’ve all got a dark side.” 

“Not me,” he fires back, staring her down. Fitz shifts uncomfortably in the middle of the two camps, and all eyes turn to him. 

“I trust Coulson,” he finally says. “And I’ve made my uh, made my peace with Ward.” 

Mack looks at him disbelievingly, shaking his head. Hunter cocks his head to the side before shrugging. 

“Fine, mate. But if you end up in a bloody box again, remember that we tried.” 

“That’s enough,” May says evenly, her tone hard. “This is a briefing, not a town hall debate.” 

Coulson nods at her and pulls up the holotable. 

“The Bus team will remember Donnie Gill from our incident with him at the Academy.” 

“That’s the kid with the freeze machine, right?” Ward finally speaks. 

“Right,” Coulson affirms. “The rest of you will get a briefing on our previous encounter with Mr. Gill. Up until recently, we had reason to believe that he was secure. When I went to see Simmons last night, I learned that he is now compromised, and Hydra is going after him. Tomorrow.” 

“But why?” Skye asks. “The machine was destroyed.” 

Coulson points at her. “That’s where it gets interesting. Apparently, Donnie’s pet project affected his biology, resulting in—“ 

“Ice powers,” Fitz breathes. 

“More or less,” Coulson agrees. “We don’t know the extent of his capabilities, but Hydra believes that he can be a powerful weapon. That means we need to get to him before they do.” 

“So what’s the plan?” Hunter asks, leaning onto the table. While Mack still eyes Ward wearily, the Brit has obviously let the argument slide. 

“Normally, we would try to intercept him before he even meets with Hydra. However, that runs the risk of blowing Agent Simmons’ cover, and we can’t risk that. So, we’ll be sending a team to run covert ops on the ship where they’re supposed to be bringing him.” 

“So he’s willingly meeting with uh—with Hydra?” Fitz asks, confused. It doesn’t fit the image he has of the young man in his head. 

Coulson shakes his head. “Not exactly. That’s why Simmons wanted to meet me outside of the ordinary dead-drop. Some higher-ups at Hydra had Simmons contact him. He thinks that he’s meeting with just her. When he gets there, there will be an entire team of Hydra operatives to capture him.” 

“And we’ll be there too,” Skye says, nodding. “Who’s running point?” Ward looks at her, a little surprised. His face becomes blatantly surprised when Coulson looks at her seriously. 

“You are.” 

She blinks at the information. “Oh. Okay, then.” 

“You’ll have May, Trip, and Hunter as backup,” he explains. “Fitz will be running comms.” 

“Shouldn’t I—shouldn’t I go?” Fitz asks hopefully. Simmons will be on this mission. It’s been a month since he’s seen her or spoken to her, and during that time his mind has gotten creative with what may be happening to her at her assignment. He feels an overwhelming need to see her with his one two eyes. “I’m familiar with uh, with Donnie. We got on.” 

Coulson sighs. “While that may be true, Agent Fitz, I’m afraid that Hydra thinks you’re dead. If they have reason to believe that Simmons lied about you, her cover will be blown.” 

Fitz swallows and nods. As much as he wants to see her, he isn’t willing to compromise her. Skye looks at him sympathetically, and he even exchanges a heavy glance with Ward. 

“Who will be with Simmons?” May clarifies. “There’s no way they’re sending her alone.” 

“She thinks it’s going to be Sunil Bakshi,” Coulson says, pulling up a photo and blowing it up on the holotable. “We encountered him when we were dealing with the Obelisk last month. He obviously takes orders from someone, but we don’t know who yet. Simmons herself is unsure. So far, they haven’t let her near too many of the higher-ups.” 

“So what’s his deal?” Skye asks. “Is he dangerous?” 

Coulson nods. “Simmons thinks he’s in charge of a brain-washing program at Hydra. She’s notice him regularly using the phrase ‘your compliance will be rewarded’, and has seen strange behavior in her peers immediately following the phrase.” 

“They’re not her peers,” Fitz grumbles. Coulson pegs him with a look and he rubs a hand over the back of his neck. 

“What’s the plan, boss?” Trip asks, leaning back against the wall. 

Coulson pulls up a 3D blueprint of the ship and begins explaining where each team member will be located. Ward watches Skye’s intense concentration, and is struck at how much she has changed from the insubordinate rookie that he had been training. He wonders if it’s because May is just better at it, or if Skye’s real defining moment had been his own betrayal. He shakes himself, remembering what Dr. Garner told him. No more getting lost in the guilt. He is free now. He is on the team again, on a probationary basis. He won’t be in the field for a while, but for now, he will continue to provide intel. It’s enough. It’s more than he thought he would get. 

He still doesn’t feel like a good man. May still steps wearily around him, and there are times when Fitz can’t stand to look at him. Skye will sometimes go a few days without looking at or speaking to him, and it usually coincides with the nights he hears her screaming “WARD, NO, PLEASE” from her bunk. But he swallows the bitter feelings that rise up in him and pays close attention to the briefing. 

When Coulson wraps up, Ward clears his throat. 

“Can I say something?” he asks. Coulson nods at him. “Well, uh…obviously most of you are apprehensive to have me re-join the team.” He receives a few eye-rolls and scoffs at that statement, but presses on. “And honestly, I can understand it. I do get it.” 

Skye’s small hand slips onto his forearm, and he’s taken back to a night at a hotel bar as her wide brown eyes look up at him through her bangs. Suddenly he changes his mind. 

“But I also don’t need to apologize to you,” he says, voice strong as he looks Mack and Hunter in the eyes. “I’ve made peace with the people that I’ve hurt, and I’ve come to terms with the ways that someone else made me the man I was. I’m working to be my own man now. I have to unlearn a lot of habits and behaviors, but I’m gonna do it. I’m doing the work. And if you can’t move past what you think you know about me, then I’m not the only one who’s got problems.” 

Skye grins at him and Coulson gives him a proud look. Even May’s mouth curves upward a little bit. 

“Welcome back, Agent Ward,” Coulson says, attempting to keep a straight face. Ward lets out a small chuckle and Fitz lets out a bark of laughter. The newer team members 

*** 

Skye checks her wrist monitor, staring at the numbers of her pulse and heart rate from her position on the top deck of the shipping vessel. She re-positions her sniper rifle and looks through the sight. 

“Anything yet?” May’s voice says in her ear. 

She shakes her head. “Not yet.” 

“I’m on the third deck,” May explains. “Hunter is on the starboard side, and we’ve got Trip near the loading dock.” 

“Got it,” Skye confirms. “I see Donnie.” 

He wanders onto the ship in a hoodie and jeans, the hood pulled up. He looks nervous and pulls his jacket closer to him in the morning ocean fog. Skye feels a twist in her heart at the lost look at on his face. 

“Keep eyes on him.” 

Skye nods again before realizing nobody can see her, and audibly confirms the order. 

“Simmons,” Skye practically breathes when she sees her friend walking with a man in a suit. There are some plain-clothes Hydra agents entering the boat as well, quickly spreading to avoid being seen by the unsuspecting Donnie. “Simmons is here, confirmation that Bakshi is with her. I count nine Hydra agents, plain-clothes with vests. Four headed toward you, May. Two on the way toward Hunter.” 

“I got one down,” Trip says. 

“Turn on your video feeds,” Coulson says to his agents. Skye clicks a button on her headband, activating the camera designed by Mack and Fitz. May can practically hear him pacing as she rolls her eyes and activates hers as well. 

Skye watches with baited breath as Simmons approaches Donnie. 

“Donnie,” she greets shakily, and he turns to her in alarm as he sees Bakshi as well. 

“You said you’d be alone,” he says, panicking. Skye hears Fitz take in a deep breath at the sound of Simmons’ voice. 

“I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that,” she says apologetically, and Skye’s heart nearly breaks at the genuine sound of it. “Please, Donnie, let’s talk.” 

“Who is he?” Donnie snaps, taking startled steps back like a caged animal. “Where is Fitz?” 

“My name is Dr. Bakshi,” the man says, his voice silken. “You might call me Dr. Simmons’ boss.” 

“And Fitz? Where’s Fitz?” he repeats. 

“Fitz is dead,” Simmons says, and her voice cracks, reaching out a hand toward Donnie. “Please, Donnie. Let me help you.” 

Donnie begins rapidly shaking his head. “You and Fitz, you’re a—a team. Why would you go to Hydra?” 

“SHIELD killed Fitz,” Jemma lies. “They ruined my life. Isn’t that what happened to Seth, Donnie?” 

“Well, she’s gotten better at lying,” Trip grunts as he quickly knocks out another Hydra operative before he has the chance to call for help. 

“No,” Donnie says quietly, staring at the deck. His head snaps up and he stares at her with rage on his face. “SHIELD didn’t kill Seth. YOU killed Seth. And you probably killed Fitz, too!” 

Dr. Bakshi chuckles. “Perhaps I should leave you two to your conversation for a while,” he says, slinking off toward the railing some distance away. 

“Fitz made a choice,” Simmons hisses. “And I am trying to offer you one, Donnie, please.” 

“You killed him!” Donnie practically roars, and he lunges for her. Simmons is quick, though, and sweeps his legs out from underneath him. She stands over him, panting from fear and exertion. She isn’t prepared for him to reach out a hand and strike her with a stream of ice, which punctures her lower abdomen. 

She screams, backing up.

“Agent Simmons, are we going to have another problem?” Bakshi asks. 

“Another problem?” Skye hears Fitz mumble. “Another?” 

“N—no, sir. No,” Simmons meekly responds. 

“When this is over, I can’t wait to watch her kick his ass,” May hisses. 

“She’ll have to get in line,” Coulson says over the comms. 

“Your compliance will be rewarded,” Simmons finally says to Donnie. 

“My compliance?” he scoffs. “You think I need compliance when I have this?” 

When he raises his hand this time, Simmons is ready and dives out of the way, wincing as her injury hits the deck. He shoots ice through the floor, and she rolls out of the way. Bakshi has already run and taken cover behind some cargo, where Simmons is sure a Hydra operative is protecting him. 

She grits her teeth and forces her body upward. “Donnie, we can fix this. Let us help you. You can be so much more than this.” 

He laughs humorlessly. “Sounds like something Fitz told me once.” 

“Skye, if he engages with Simmons again, take the shot,” Coulson orders. 

“Phil—“ May says. “Let me get to him.” 

“You can’t be seen, May. Skye, can you do this?” 

Skye glances back at her cuff. Her vitals remain steady. 

“Whatever it takes,” she replies evenly. Her hands are steady as she lines up her shot and places her finger on the trigger. 

“We’ve got more company!” Trip yells. She can hear him tussling with what she assumes are multiple Hydra agents. 

“Bring the party to me,” Hunter says. 

“Comin’ at ya,” Trip pants back. 

“Oi, this is the worst party I’ve ever been to,” Hunter grunts as the agents reach him. 

Skye struggles to keep her attention on the scene in front of her, but when she sees Simmons clutching her abdomen with a blood-soaked hand, it becomes much easier. 

Simmons senses eyes on her and glances up, meeting Skye’s. Skye nearly gasps as she looks at her friend. Jemma’s cheeks are hallow, her skin more pale than normal and dark circles line the bottom of her eyes. 

“Jemma,” she hears Fitz say into her ear. There’s something disconcerting about it, like she’s interrupting a private moment between the two of them, even though Jemma can’t even see or hear him. 

Jemma gives Skye a nearly imperceptible shake of her head, and Skye nods back at her. She’ll hold off on taking her shot, but not for much longer. After that, everything happens so quickly Skye can barely register what’s going on. Donnie hits Jemma with another spear of ice, this time on her thigh. She nearly crumbles to the ground, and he takes aim at her heart. Skye instinctively puts a bullet between his eyes, and he falls over the railing into the ocean. It’s an ICER bullet, but she’s sure he will drown. She glances at her cuff, and finds that her vitals are still even. She hears Jemma scream, and she’s not sure if it’s from pain or from Donnie’s death. 

Then she hears Fitz in her ear, reacting to Jemma’s injury and probably to her repeated scream of “NO!” 

“JEMMA!” he yells, and she hears shuffling on the other end. 

“Fitz, calm down,” Ward speaks softly. “She’s going to be fine. She’s okay.” 

“Oh, shit!” she hears Trip shout. She looks back at the scene in front of her, and Jemma is trying desperately to launch herself over the railing and into the water after Donnie. 

“Stop her!” May yells, and Skye sees her running from the other side, a Hydra agent on her tail. Bakshi finally re-emerges from behind the cargo and engages with May. Skye abandons her weapon and goes running toward the lower deck, jumping from ladders and containers to make it there as fast as she can. 

“Simmons,” Bakshi says loudly, keeping his tone even. “Did you happen to invite your friends?” 

She’s standing on the railing and glances back at him. 

“Simmons defected,” May growls, landing a punch to his jaw. “Trip, take your shot!” 

He nods and shoots her quickly with an ICER, but rushes forward as she tilts toward the water. He throws her, rather roughly, back onto the deck, assuming an expression of anger as he looks down at her. Her clothing is stained red and her blood is seeping onto the deck. All of his training, as well as his affection for his teammate, scream at him to treat her, but he can’t—helping her would only blow her cover and who knows what would happen to her then. 

May nods toward the cloaked quinjet near where Hunter has just laid out his last Hydra agent. “Let’s move!” 

Skye, Hunter, Trip, and May all make a run for it, dodging stray Hydra bullets as they jump onto the plane. When they’re all situated in the back, Skye glances down at her cuff. Her vitals are still even. 

*** 

“How could you leave her?” Fitz rages at Coulson, pacing and turning to knock paperwork off of the table in front of him. 

“Hey!” Mack shouts. “You need to calm down.” 

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Fitz growls. “She’s injured and we left her.” 

Ward steps forward, placing a hand on Fitz’s shoulder. “He’s right, sir. Her cover may be compromised.” 

Mack scoffs and puts his hands up. “That’s not how a mission works and you know it, Ward.” 

Coulson calmly looks between the arguing men. “Look, that mission did not go as planned.” 

“You think?” Fitz spits. “Is Simmons just—just collateral damage? Did you see her face? She’s not—she’s not well!” 

“She’s—somewhat struggling at Hydra. It’s common for a first-time undercover agent. But she’ll be okay. Hydra medics will tend to her injuries, and she’ll be back in the lab by tomorrow.” 

“By tomorrow?” Ward asks disbelievingly. 

“This is part of the job. You know that.” 

Fitz slams his hands down, shaking out his bad one. “She’s—she’s—she’s—“ 

He can’t get the words out, and the world feels like it’s spinning. The scream she’d made when Donnie had fallen overboard brought him right back to pushing the red button in the pod, right before the water knocked him unconscious. He couldn’t even imagine the panic she felt watching him tumble, knowing he would drown. He wonders if she can take showers by herself now. He assumes so, given that she hasn’t been to the base in a month. Regardless, it makes his stomach turn. 

_“Oh, Fitz,” a soft voice says beside him. He feels the ghost of a hand on his shoulder and he reaches up to touch her. She looks as she did before everything went to hell, her hair longer and clothed in a button-up shirt with a sweater over it. “I’ll be alright. Only one more month, remember?”_

He shakes himself, but doesn’t remove his hand from his shoulder. The arguing over Jemma’s fate continues, and nobody notices him mumbling to an invisible woman to his left. 

The large monitor in the briefing room suddenly springs to life, red flashing on the screen with an urgent video message. Underneath sender, it reads “Codename: Mockingbird”. 

“Coulson,” she says rapidly. “Simmons just arrived back at HQ. She’s being detained. I think she may be compromised. We need to start taking steps toward possible extraction.” 

Coulson nods at her as the room falls quiet around him. He looks at the brunette in the Hydra uniform on his screen. “Thank you, Agent Morse. See if you can get in there, figure out what they want from her.” 

“Got it. Be in touch.” 

The call is over as quickly as it began, and the team is distracted by the sound of the garage opening. 

“They’re back,” Ward says anxiously, moving quickly for the doors. Skye is the first one out of the van, and she sprints directly to Fitz, throwing her arms around him. 

“I’m so sorry,” she mumbles into his shoulder. “I couldn’t do anything for her.” 

“She’s—she’s—they’ve um, they’ve de—de—de—“ he struggles, looking over Skye’s shoulder helplessly at Ward. 

“They’ve detained her. She may be compromised,” Ward informs her gently. She extracts herself from Fitz and looks up at him with fear growing in her brown eyes. 

“I took the shot,” she whispers to him. He licks his lip and nods. 

“I know. Are you okay?” 

“I don’t—I’m not sure.” 

He nods again. “If you need to talk, Garner is here.” 

She shakes her head. “Not yet. And I don’t think I’m ready to talk to him about it. Maybe later, if I’m ready, I could talk to you. You have experience with this.” 

“Of course,” he assures her, awkwardly patting her arm. “Whatever you need, rookie.” 

She gives him a watery smile and then follows May, who beckons her forward. The older woman stops her before they go to debrief with Coulson. 

“Are you alright?” she asks. “It’s never easy, making the call.” 

Skye swallows hard. “I’ve been better.” 

May gives her an understanding glance. “I know.” 

They’re almost to Coulson’s office when Skye grabs the older agent’s arm. 

“Hey, May?” 

She turns expectantly. 

“Does it ever get easier?” 

May shakes her head. “No, it doesn’t. We’re only human, Skye.”


	9. and if you're still breathing you're the lucky ones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm going to be honest. This chapter is a HOT MESS. Just bear with me. 
> 
> This chapter is also a bit icky at the end, so you may want to scroll past once the team is back on the jet. That's all I can say without giving away too much!

“Extract her,” May grits out between her teeth. She stands on one side of Coulson’s desk, leaning on her hands. 

“It’s not that simple, May,” he argues. Skye looks between them like she’s watching a particularly terrifying tennis match. 

“She won’t hold up!” May practically shouts, slamming a hand down. Skye flinches and is shocked that Coulson doesn’t. He simply looks at the other woman calmly. “You know for a fact that she will not hold up under torture Coulson. If they program her—“ 

Coulson shakes his head sternly. “They won’t program her. It would be way too hard to program Simmons.” 

“You don’t know that!” May exclaims, throwing her hands up. “You are being reckless with that kid’s life. Ever since you became Director, you’ve become so wrapped up in the big picture that you’ve forgotten your agents are not pawns, Phil.” 

“She’s not a kid!” Coulson shouts back at her. “She’s twenty-eight years old, Melinda.” 

“Don’t call me that,” May hisses. “You know as well as I do that she was hardly prepared for this mission, let alone to be a prisoner.” 

“You’re the one who wouldn’t do the simulation,” Coulson reminds her, and it sounds like a growl. Panic starts to rise up in Skye’s chest, and she feels like a child watching their parents get a divorce—only her sibling’s life is at stake. 

May looks like she’s been slapped, and she steps back, swallowing hard. “You’re right,” she admits, and her voice is nearly a whisper. “It was a weakness.” 

And then she’s gone, leaving Skye alone with Coulson. Coulson kicks the side of his desk, forgetting the younger agent is even in the room. 

“Wow,” Skye eventually breathes. His eyes snap up to her. “So we’re not extracting her then.” 

“Not yet,” Coulson says, regret laced in his voice. “It’s too risky. We would blow Morse’s cover.” 

“Morse?” Skye asks, confused. 

“Mockingbird,” he corrects. “She’s finally got a high spot in security. We can’t risk blowing her cover.” 

“And Simmons is just—what? A bargaining chip? And unfortunate casualty?” 

“Skye—“ 

“May was right,” Skye scoffs. “You’re not…you’re not AC anymore. I don’t even recognize you.” 

“Sometimes being a leader means making sacrifices.” 

“So Simmons is just the sacrificial lamb. No, no, I get it, Coulson. We’re expendable to you now. The days of unauthorized extraction plans to get our team out are over.” 

“They have to be,” Coulson says tiredly. “Our resources are strapped. We’re still technically operating outside of the law.” 

“I stayed because SHIELD is the closest thing to family I’ve ever known,” Skye responds. “You’re the one who showed me that all those years, SHIELD had my back. Now I’m an agent, and now I see what Garrett was talking about.” She laughs bitterly. “Let’s just hope that Simmons dies then, huh? I’d hate for her to end up like him.” 

Skye leaves as quickly as May did, practically running out of the office and down the dimly lit hallway of the Playground. She chokes on a lump in her throat, trying her hardest not to imagine Simmons covered in bruises, begging for help. 

“Woah!” a voice comes suddenly as she collides with a wall. 

She looks up at Ward’s face and quickly snaps her eyes shut. “Sorry.” 

She moves to go past him, but he gently catches her arms. “Skye, what’s going on? Are you okay?” 

“Coulson won’t extract Simmons,” Skye practically whimpers. “May obviously thinks they’re going to torture her, and she won’t hold up, and—“ 

She’s cut off by her own sob, and Ward stands stiffly for a moment, jaw lax. He finally pulls her into him. 

“Shh, it’s going to be okay. It’ll be okay.” 

“No it won’t!” Skye yells, pushing him back from her. “I killed someone to protect her! And for what?! So she can just die at the hands of fucking Hydra?!” 

Her breathing comes rapidly and erratically. Ward places his hands on her shoulders, crouching slightly to meet her eyes. 

“You need to breathe, Skye. Come on, get yourself under control. You made the call that needed to be made. Simmons is a hell of a lot tougher than you guys are giving her credit for. She’ll hold up.” 

“How do you know that?” she spits out, furiously wiping at her cheeks. 

Ward pauses, biting his lip as he thinks. “I guess I don’t know it. I just really, really believe it. Simmons once threw herself out of a plane to protect us. She jumped on a live grenade that she didn’t know was non-lethal. There’s no way that she’ll give them any information, and she’s not going to physically cave that easily, either. Simmons has always fought for this team—she’s going to do it again. You’ll see.” 

Something flashes in Skye’s eyes and he’s not sure what to call it, but she’s staring at him like he’s offering her a life raft. He’d fought hard during his time in Vault D to forget about the way her lips felt on his, to stop thinking about how perfectly her hand fit in his even as she was playing him to save the team. It’s hard to forget those things when she’s looking up at him with hope and something else all over her face. He brushes a hand over her hair. 

“A little better?” he murmurs to her as her breathing settles. She nods emphatically at him and he gives her a small smile in return. “Good. So we’ve got two options now. Do you wanna hit something, or do you wanna talk about Donnie?” 

“I think I’m ready to talk,” she says hesitantly. Skye looks around, trying to think of a spot for it. “Let’s go to my bunk.” 

He blinks rapidly but follows her lead anyway. He finds that it looks almost just like her space on the Bus. There are clothes all over the floor, and her laptop is open on the desk. She’s haphazardly taped photos on the wall above her workspace, and he’s surprised to find one of Simmons, Fitz, Skye, and himself, the day that they destroyed the 084 they found in Peru. Beers are clutched loosely in their hands, tired but pleased smiles on their faces as they sit on the cargo ramp of the Bus. 

She sits on the bed, and he awkwardly looks around before settling into the desk chair. She takes a deep breath and begins talking, starting with how hard it had been to focus until she saw Jemma’s face. She talks about how she keeps seeing his face when she goes to sleep, the blue tendrils of dendrotoxin overtaking it as he tumbles backward over the railing into the water. Eventually she cannot talk anymore, and another sob rips from her throat. He moves quickly to her side, pulling her to him as she cries. 

“It doesn’t get easier,” he finally says. “I really want to tell you that it does, but it doesn’t. Not even for robots.” She gives him a watery chuckle at his reference. “And it shouldn’t. I don’t think we’re meant to compartmentalize to that extreme. Taking a life doesn’t get easier. You need to grieve. For him, and for yourself.” 

She nods into his shoulder, breathing in shakily. “Grieving. Got it.” 

He closes his eyes as she burrows further into him, trying his hardest to shut off the part of his heart that is enjoying this far too much. They settle into comfortable silence, occasionally punctuated by small cries from Skye. 

They stay that way until they hear yelling coming from the common area. They exchange a look and Skye straightens her clothes and hair, swiping the running mascara from under her eyes. They make their way toward the sound. 

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, BOBBI?” Hunter roars at the brunette woman on the screen, whose face is pulled tight as she glances behind her wearily. “YOU LET ME THINK YOU WERE DEAD!” 

“Hunter, please, I can’t do this with you right now,” she says tiredly. “I can’t get through to the channel in Coulson’s office. I need to talk to him.” 

May appears as if from nowhere. Bobbi sees her and looks instantly relieved. “May, thank God. Listen, my cover is still in tact, but Simmons is compromised. I’ve just got back from paying her a visit. She still doesn’t know who I am, but it’s not good.” 

Fitz looks up from where he’d been mumbling to himself in the corner of the room, hand on his own shoulder. 

“How not good?” May asks with practiced restraint. 

“I give her 48 hours. Maybe 72 if we’re lucky,” Bobbi replies gravely. 

“Have they attempted to program her?” 

Bobbi shakes her head. “It would take weeks for someone that intelligent. They know that. They’re hoping they can break her physically, and they may not be wrong.” 

May’s entire body tenses and she turns to the agents that have gathered in the room. Coulson has finally made it to the archway that leads to the room and May gives him a look that could kill. 

“I’m going,” she says, her voice resounding with fire. “If anyone wants to be on the extraction team, come with me to the quinjet. We’re running out of time.” 

Coulson opens his mouth to protest but quickly shuts it when he sees Agent Morse’s drawn face. He reluctantly nods at May. 

“She’s right. We start now.” 

“Wheels up in an hour,” May growls, brushing past Coulson. 

Skye immediately takes off after her, and Fitz seems to argue with himself near the couch. Hunter is still shaking with anger as the line cuts off of the video feed. He runs his hands through his hair and shakes his head as he leaves to follow May as well. 

“Never get fucking married,” he advises Ward. The other man simply stares at the Brit as he storms out. Trip approaches him quietly. 

“Think they’ll let you go?” 

Ward looks surprised and glances up. “Maybe. I’ve got to try though.” 

Trip nods in understanding. “She’s Simmons.” 

“She’s Simmons.” 

“Fitz, man, you alright?” Trip asks the other man. Fitz looks up and his eyes are wild and glistening. He nods but he’s obviously shaken, and Trip approaches him. He shoots a glance back to Ward indicating that he has it under control, and Ward leaves to fight his case to Coulson. He needs to be on this extraction team. 

*** 

When the quinjet takes off, May sits in the pilot seat with Ward of all people beside her. Skye sits across from Hunter in the jump seats, Trip on her right side and Fitz on her left. Her arm goes to Fitz’s back once more as he leans on his knees, feet anxiously bouncing. 

“We’re gonna get her, Fitz,” Skye says softly. “We will.” 

Fitz doesn’t seem to even hear her as he mumbles to himself. She’s still surprised that Coulson allowed the engineer to come, with the caveat that he not leave the plane. Skye isn’t one hundred percent sure that Fitz isn’t going to bolt off the plane the second it lands, but she hopes he’ll stay put. Beside her, Trip rustles through his backpack full of medical supplies. 

“So, Hunter,” Skye finally says, breaking the tense silence of the jet. “You’re married to Agent Badass?” 

He snorts. “Agent Hellbeast is more like it, but yeah, I am.” 

“Thought you two divorced,” May says from the cockpit, tone light. 

Hunter rolls his eyes. “Legally separated, thanks.” 

“Juicy,” Skye teases. “We love drama on this team. We’ve got the good old FitzSimmons ‘will they or won’t they’ thing, the ‘are May and Coulson married in real life’, and now we’ve got the Hunter and Bobbi divorce court.” 

Trip and Ward both laugh, and Hunter narrows his eyes at her. 

“Ah, but you’ve left out the Skye and Ward mutual pining.” 

Skye immediately stops laughing and Ward’s entire body stills as the plane descends back into silence.

“How much longer?” Fitz asks after a few minutes. His voice is so strained that Skye is surprised he even got the words out at all. 

“About 20 minutes,” May answers. “Let’s review one more time. Ward is going to get us in. He’ll say that Hunter is vetted. When he and Hunter reach the basement, Hunter will take out the cameras and Ward will handle the guards. Skye will re-route the camera feed so it doesn’t look suspicious. Then Skye, Trip, and I will drop in from the vents, and Skye and I will assist with any Hydra operatives left standing. Trip’s priority is to get Simmons immediate medical attention, and then get her back on this plane. Fitz will run comms from the plane,” she explains for the twentieth time. “And he will not leave this plane.” 

“I won’t leave the bloody plane,” Fitz grumbles. “Don’t know how many times I have to promise that.” 

“We’ve got this,” Skye says confidently. 

“There’s no other option,” Trip agrees. 

“Agent Morse knows our plan,” May adds. “If her cover is blown, she’ll be meeting Fitz on the plane.” 

Hunter rolls his eyes. “Oh good, we can have a little catch-up then.” 

The cloaked quinjet hovers in the Hydra loading dock, and Ward and Hunter get off. Skye grabs Ward’s hand as he walks by. 

“Please, let’s get her out of there,” she says to him. He nods at her and gulps down a heavy breath before following Hunter off of the quinjet. 

*** 

It had started smoothly. The Hydra security team that manned the front entrance let Ward and Hunter in with little complication. Ward had simply told them that he was finishing up some of Garrett’s unfinished business since his escape from SHIELD, and presented Hunter as his recruited mercenary body guard. It had also been surprisingly easy to gain access to the detainment area. When they’d reached the basement, Hunter quickly shot out the security cameras, and Ward could only assume that Skye was re-routing them. The four guards that were present in the hallway immediately began shooting when Hunter raised his weapon to the cameras, and Ward returned fire, taking down two before dealing with the others with some hand-to-hand combat. 

A loud bang resounds from above them, and May drops down, followed swiftly by Trip and Skye. 

“I think she’s down at the end,” Ward supplies, weapon drawn. 

“SIMMONS!” Skye shouts into the basement. There are too many doors for her to search all of them, and she waits a moment to see if there is any response. A low, guttural noise echoes from the end, just where Ward had pointed. 

“I think that’s her,” Trip says, running down to the door. Skye follows suit as Hydra agents suddenly flood the area. 

“We’ve got company,” May announces, grunting as she delivers a kick to a guard’s skull. 

“Shit,” Ward grunts, suddenly surrounded by four more operatives. 

“Seriously,” Hunter groans, using the butt of his gun to knock an attacker unconscious. 

“We can’t get in!” Trip shouts down the hall. “I can’t see her, there’s no way to know if shooting the lock will injure her.” 

“Don’t shoot!” Fitz yells into the comms. Skye rolls her eyes. 

“He just said he wouldn’t, Fitz,” Skye sighs in exasperation. 

“Can’t really help now!” Ward shouts to them. “Look out, coming at you!” 

Skye quickly raises her weapons and fires at the man running toward them. 

The door to Jemma’s cell bursts open suddenly, sending Skye and Trip backward. Two guards move to overtake them, and Skye gets a glimpse of Jemma tied upright just before a dark-haired woman backhands her across the face. 

“JEMMA!” Skye yells, fighting through the two guards to reach her. The brunette woman suddenly turns and Skye recognizes her as Agent Morse. 

She withdraws two batons from her belt and immediately engages the Hydra guards protecting her. Skye can barely keep track of her movements as she spins and flips, knocking all four guards out. She looks up at Skye from her crouched position near the floor. 

“You must be Skye,” she pants when the men are down. Skye stands in the doorway, gaping at Bobbi. “Bobbi.” 

“What. Is. Happening?” Jemma hisses in pain. 

“Shit, Jemma!” Skye races forward. “Trip!” 

Trip moves quickly into the room, nodding at Bobbi before making quick work of Jemma’s restraints. 

“Backup!” May shouts from the hall. Bobbi and Skye immediately race back out into the fray. 

“Alright, Simmons, let’s see what we can do here,” Trip says soothingly as she collapses into his arms, her arms finally relieved of their position above her head. 

“Trip,” she breathes, looking at him through glassy eyes. She looks completely disoriented, and he suspects they must have forced her to stay awake for the two days she’d been detained. The wounds inflicted by Donnie on the boat look simultaneously red and putrid. The one on her thigh has been poorly stitched together with a material that is not medical threading. 

“What is this?” Trip says as he lays her down, indicating her leg. 

“I used part of my hair,” Jemma whimpers as he touches it. 

“Holy shit,” Trip whistles. “Alright, it’s infected. Badly. We need to get you to medical attention. Do you think you can walk?” 

She sits up slowly, allowing Trip to pull her gently to her feet. She pushes him away to test her strength. 

“I don’t think I’ll last long,” she finally says, her voice raspy and hoarse. “But I think I can do it.” 

“Alright,” Trip says. “Stay on me. I’ll cover you.” 

He tosses her a gun and she catches it awkwardly. They both cock their weapons and press themselves on either side of the door. He nods at her, taking point and moving into the hallway. 

“They won’t stop coming!” Skye yells over the gunfire. She and Ward stand back to back, firing rapidly into the incoming crowd of agents. 

“I have a plan!” Bobbi yells. She pulls a small object from her belt and throws it toward the doorway, where it beeps for a few seconds. “Clear the door!” 

Just as Ward pulls Skye further from the door, the object blows, trapping the team inside the basement with the remaining Hydra agents. 

“How the hell do we get out, Morse?” May grits out between her teeth. 

Morse takes out the remaining agent and takes off toward one of the cells. When she reaches it, she feels around on the wall near the doorway and pushes it open. 

“Cargo elevator,” Morse breathes. “Come on! Tell whoever is in the plane to take it to the roof!” 

“Fitz, do you copy? We need you to fly the jet to the roof!” 

“The roof?” he yelps. “Oh—okay. Okay.” 

“Can you do this?” May repeats. 

“Yes, I can—can do this.” 

The team piles into the elevator, and Skye grabs Jemma’s arm and slings it over her shoulder. 

“Jemma,” she pants out. “You okay?” 

Jemma shakes her head, sweat beading all over her face. “I think I might—“ 

And with that, she vomits onto the floor of the elevator, splattering Ward and Trip’s shoes. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers as she remains hunched over. 

“Simmons, I say this as your friend,” Ward says. “Don’t fucking apologize.” 

Simmons lets out a small sound of laughter before she groans again, leaning hard on Skye’s shoulder. Skye yelps and leans back instinctively. Ward tries his best to look at her in the crowded elevator. 

“Rookie, you okay?” 

“You’re gonna have to stop calling me that eventually,” Skye moans. “I think I was hit, I didn’t notice till now.” 

She feels around on her arm, trying not to hit the center of the pain that radiates through her arm and torso. When she removes her fingers, they’re covered in blood. 

“Yep, definitely hit,” Morse says. “Give me Simmons. We’ll take up the rear.” 

“No way,” Trip says. “I got her, we can take point.” 

“Simmons cannot take point,” Bobbi argues back. Simmons weakly agrees. The elevator doors open into the sunlight, and Trip and Ward fall out first, followed by May, Hunter, and Skye. The door to the stairwell bursts open just as Bobbi and Jemma make their way out of the elevator. 

“Run!” Bobbi yells. “Don’t engage, just run!” 

The sun glints off of the plane, revealing it despite the cloaking. Fitz clumsily steers the quinjet so that the cargo ramp is slightly open, facing the building. 

Trip and Ward stop short at the ramp, waving Hunter and Skye onto it. May jumps in after them, and Trip takes the jump. Ward hears May move Fitz away from the cockpit, taking over once more. In the transition, the jet moves further from the roof just as Ward makes his jump. He desperately claws for the ramp and Trip grabs both of his arms, hauling him onto the jet. 

Bullets begin to ricochet off of the jet, and May has no choice but to lower it to avoid it being shot out of the sky. Bobbi and Simmons run toward the edge of the roof. 

“JUMP!” Bobbi yells to Simmons. They leap off of the building, landing roughly on top of the plane. 

“Bloody hell,” Hunter says. “They’re on the wing!” 

Fitz stands in the middle of the chaos, wringing his hands anxiously. Trip immediately patches up Skye’s wound. 

“It looks like a bad graze, I don’t think it went in.” 

Ward jumps up from his spot on the floor. “I’ve got it.” 

He hops up, grabbing onto the top of the cargo door and pulling up on top of it. Skye mumbles some joke about pull-ups, and Fitz nearly laughs, but his heart is too far up his throat to allow him to make any noise. 

Ward manages to reach Morse and Simmons, latching onto Bobbi’s arm as she pulls Jemma by the waist behind her.

“You got this?” he asks Morse over the roar of the engine. 

She gives him a determined nod in return and watches as he swings back into the cargo hold. His arms reappear. 

“Give me Simmons!” 

Simmons, for her part, looks near unconsciousness, covered in sweat and blood. Morse manages to hand her off, though, and swings herself through the open space left by Ward just as May raises the ramp to close the jet. 

“Jemma,” Fitz says softly, moving toward her as she collapses on the floor. He immediately kneels next to her, desperately searching her face. She takes in a slow breath. 

“Fitz,” she whispers, a slow and small smile blooming on her haggard features. “I need a knife,” she says suddenly, and he startles. 

“A what?” 

“A knife!” she repeats loudly. She grabs at the closest leg (Hunter’s, as it happens) and grabs the knife from his boot. Fitz watches in blatant horror as she slices open her poorly patched wound on her thigh. Jemma lets out a scream of pain as she forces her fingers into the cut. 

“What are you doing?!” Fitz yells at her. 

“Here,” she sighs, withdrawing a black object. “I didn’t—I didn’t come back—empty handed.” 

Trip immediately moves to press gauze to her re-opened wound and Skye swallows down a mouth full of bile at the sight. Fitz gags and moves behind Jemma as he sees her waver. 

“Woah, woah,” he soothes. “Hey, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Jemma.” 

“Fitz,” she whimpers, and then slouches against him, unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, this is an absolute hot mess. In case you were wondering, Bobbi and Hunter are still legally married. We'll see their confrontation in the next chapter. Jemma and Fitz will also get a chance to re-connect. I'm hoping to finish this over the weekend, since I start school on Monday. There will probably only be a few more chapters of this. I've gotten myself in a bit too deep with this one, and I won't have time to fully hash out an entire season.


	10. what if this storm ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma and Fitz have a talk, and Bobbi and Hunter do what they do best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this chapter bounces all around in terms of tone. There's some (hopefully) funny-cute-bits, but there's also quite a bit of angst. All the fluff i've been writing has made writing this story much harder! 
> 
> Also I'm trash and used a meme in my story and I hope that it's cute and funny and not plain stupid. Let me know what you think :)

Fitz sits anxiously beside Jemma’s bed, her hand in his. Dr. Cho had placed her in a medically-induced coma so that her body could better heal from the infection. According to her, Jemma was at risk of losing a leg, and even though Fitz didn’t like it, he’d agreed to the treatment. Nobody questioned why the doctors involved in Jemma’s treatment deferred to Fitz for the final say; it had been the same when Fitz was in her position. 

“You need to eat,” May says quietly as she enters the room. 

Fitz shrugs. “Not hungry.” 

“You haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday. Come have dinner,” May urges, stepping closer to him. 

“Really. I’m not hungry,” he says tersely, tightening his grip on Jemma’s fingers and running a thumb over her knuckles. 

“They won’t wake her up until tomorrow morning,” May tries again, a little less gently. “And you’re not going to be any use to her if you faint.” 

That seems to do the trick, and he wrenches himself out of his dazed state. 

“Alright, fine. But can I eat in here?” 

May sighs tiredly but nods. “Sure. I’ll send Skye back with a plate.” 

He thanks her and returns to his silent vigil over his best friend. May can’t help but remember when the positions of the two scientists were reversed; the night she spent with Jemma when she agreed to train her immediately comes to her mind. Would Simmons have still wound up here, in a hospital bed after an undercover mission? Some part of May somehow knows that Jemma would have gone anyway. At least she had a fighting chance at protecting herself this way. 

She leaves Fitz alone, and he places a kiss to Jemma’s hand. 

“I’m excited to see you,” Fitz tells her. “Obviously I can—can see you now. But it’s been a long time since we actually, uh, you know…talked. I’ve missed you a lot, Jemma.” 

He leans his head onto her hand, closing his eyes. “Dr. Cho had to leave, something about the Avengers or something, but uh, she said you might wake up on your own. So I’m gonna stay here with you, okay? I don’t want you to wake up alone. You—you were there when I woke up. I’ll be here for you.” 

“I’ve been getting better while you were gone,” he tells her. “I know it wasn’t quite two months, but I um, I talk a lot better now. I’ve been workin’ on some projects, too. Mack and I work well together. He doesn’t seem to, uh, to like Ward much though. But I kind of—kind of trust him. Especially after he helped get you back. I think you were—were right. I didn’t want you to be, y’know. But I think maybe I pushed myself too hard for you.” 

Skye appears in the doorway, clearing her throat so that he doesn’t feel like she’s violated his privacy. She holds two plates in her hands, and she gives him a smile as she hands him one, taking a seat on the other side of Jemma’s bed. 

“How’s she doing?” 

Fitz shrugs as he plays with the food on his plate. “Pretty much the same. Some of her vitals are rising, so I think she may wake up on her own.” 

“Can she keep her leg?” Skye asks anxiously. 

“Yeah, her leg should be fine,” Fitz answers. “She got really lucky with where Donnie hit her abdomen, as well. Just missed her lung.” 

Skye swallows hard at the mention of Donnie, and focuses her attention on Jemma’s face. 

“She’s gonna have a long road, isn’t she?” 

Fitz bites his lip. “Probably. Turns out that flash drive she shoved into her leg had a lot of schematics for weapons and most of the research from the department, though. She’ll feel good that she got the job done.” 

Skye laughs a little. “Always so competitive, our Dr. Simmons.” 

Fitz grins fondly at Jemma’s sleeping form. “You’ve got no idea. If she’d come back with nothing she would have, uh, would have asked to go back.” 

They finished their meals quietly, accompanied only by the sound of Jemma’s monitors. When she moves her plate to the side and crosses her legs in her seat, Skye suddenly smirks at him. 

“I’m gonna try something. Just for fun.” 

Fitz looks at her dubiously. “You’re not gonna hurt her, are you?” 

Skye looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “Um, hello, I’m Skye, Jemma is my friend. Have we met?” 

Fitz grumbles at her to get on with it, anxiously watching as she leans toward Jemma. 

“Hey Jemma. Leo Fitz is the worst person I’ve ever met. He’s not even very smart. He’s a terrible person.” 

“Hey!” Fitz protests. Then he feels Jemma’s fingers twitch beneath his. “Oh my God.” 

“Are you fucking serious?!” Skye squeaks. “Jemma! Jemma! Fitz is horrible. He’s so gross and awful. His DWARFs are stupid. The Night Night Gun is ridiculous. His obsession with monkeys is not at all cute.” 

Jemma makes a groaning noise, and Skye and Fitz both lean eagerly forward. Her eyelids begin to flutter. 

“Jemma! He’s the worst person I’ve ever met! He stands like a pregnant lady like, all the time. His cardigans are a crime against fashion and humanity.” 

“Stop,” Jemma moans. Fitz runs a hand over her head and glares at Skye. 

“Leave her alone,” he hisses. 

“I’ll fight you,” she mumbles to Skye. “I really will. Just give me—give me like, maybe three minutes.” 

Skye throws her head back and laughs. “Oh my God I cannot believe that worked. Oh, FitzSimmons, you two are my favorites.” 

“Jemma, are you feeling okay?” Fitz asks worriedly, ignoring Skye’s raucous laughter. 

“I’m fine,” she slurs. “My legs feel like, like um…jelly!” 

Fitz chuckles warmly and kisses her forehead. “Oh, Jemma.” 

“But Fitz,” she whispers loudly. “Fitz, you have to help me fight Skye.” 

Skye laughs even louder at that, shouting into the hallway for everyone to come to Jemma’s room as quickly as possible. 

“You know what, Simmons, I’ll let you guys beat me up if that’s what you want.” 

Nearly the entire team bolts into the room, various expressions of relief and exasperation on their faces. 

“She’s awake,” Coulson sighs. “Maybe next time, don’t make it sound like an emergency.” 

“Coulson!” Jemma coos. “Oh, you darling man. You’ve got such a nice head.” 

May snorts, lips quirking up in a small smile. “Simmons is high.” 

Jemma’s mouth forms a perfect “o” shape. “I am not! I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again—I don’t do bad girl shenanigans.” 

Hunter laughs loudly. “This is brilliant. I love this. We should just keep her like this all the time.” 

Jemma spots Bobbi and squeaks. “Bobbi. You are amazing.” 

“Thank you, Agent Simmons.” 

Jemma rapidly shakes her head. “No, no. Call me—Jemz. With a “z”, please.” 

Fitz finally loses it, spluttering in laughter. 

“Grant Ward,” Jemma purrs. “Oh, your cheekbones look sharp. Are they sharp? Do you hurt yourself? I hope not.” 

Fitz stops laughing and glares at Ward. “Jemma, maybe we should be quiet now.” 

She turns to look at him, and the smile that spreads across her face is blinding. “Leo!” She clumsily tries to grab his face, smacking him across the face. “You are the most precious thing to me.” 

“Maybe we should go,” May suggests, ushering all the on-lookers out. Skye whines, still holding up her phone and filming Jemma’s interactions. “You too, Skye. You can come back and see her later.” 

Fitz looks gratefully to May, who gives him a small wink and a smirk. When everyone is gone, Fitz looks at Jemma softly, searching her face. “You’re precious to me, too, Jemma.” 

“But you’re more than that,” Jemma whispers. “I missed you.” 

“I missed you, too,” Fitz replies, kissing her forehead once more. She sighs happily. 

“I’d like a snuggle, please.” 

He chuckles again as she scoots to the side. Fitz gently moves her the other direction. “I don’t want to lay on your bad side.” 

“You’re brilliant,” she sighs, melting into him as he climbs in to the small bed beside her. She lays her head on his chest and hums along to his heartbeat. “I’m so glad you’re here.” 

“Me too.” 

“Can I go back to sleep?” 

“Of course you can.” 

“Will you stay here with me? I promise to wake up soon.” 

“I promise. I’ll be right here.” 

She kisses his chest and snuggles her face deeper into his neck. He pulls her closer, careful of her abdominal wounds, and shuts his own eyes. They’ll talk when she’s not drugged up. He’s waited this long; he can wait a few more hours. 

***   
Bobbi finds Hunter exactly where she expects, sitting on the hood of Lola with a beer in his hand. 

“Coulson will shoot you if he sees you on his car,” she says lightly. He glances up at her and takes a long swig from the bottle. 

“He’s too excited about Doc waking up. There’s more in the car if you want one.” 

She nods and grabs two more, figuring his is nearly empty. She hands one to him and she watches as he pops it open on the bumper of the car, raising her eyebrows as she follows his lead. They sit in a half-tense, half-comfortable silence. 

“I’m sorry, Lance.” 

He shakes his head, staring in front of him instead of looking at her. “You let me think you were dead, Bob. I grieved you. We had a bloody funeral, for godssake.” 

“We?” 

“Me and your parents. Your brother, too.” 

Bobbi winces, chugging her beer. “You have no idea how sorry I am. If there was any other way—“ 

“Is that why we split up?” he interrupts, finally looking at her. “Because you were going undercover in Hydra?” 

She lets out a long breath. “Things weren’t going very well for us. When the opportunity came, I did what I needed to do.” 

“You broke my heart,” he says, wounded. “And then you let me believe you were dead. Instead of just trying to work out our issues like a normal person, you decide it’d be best to separate so you can fake your own death and go to bloody Hydra!” 

“I don’t know how else to say I’m sorry!” Bobbi explodes, standing and turning to face him. “Because I am, Hunter. I am so, so sorry. But I did what I needed to do.” 

“Is this why SHIELD picked me up?” 

“It was my condition to accepting the assignment,” Bobbi admits. “I was worried that if anything happened to me, Hydra would come after you. I wanted you to be safe. Coulson seemed like the best person for the job.” 

“I can’t believe you, Bob.” 

“Please, Hunter. Please try to understand. You knew when you met me that my job was my life—“ 

“But then you agreed to marry me so I assumed I would be a part of that life!” Hunter shouts, standing to meet her. “You were always making decisions without including me. You moved us to that sketchy safehouse without asking me how I felt about it! You called my mother when I got shot even though I don’t even speak to her! You go off and decide to fake your own death without consulting with me first!” 

“Hunter,” Bobbi pleads. 

“You made me fall head over heels in love with you and never asked me if it’s what I wanted!” 

He stops, panting as he stares at her face. His fingers itch for her, and he pulls her into him. She freezes in response before slowly wrapping her arms around his shoulders. 

“I missed you,” she whispers into his neck. “I really did. I know you probably don’t believe me, but I did.” 

“I missed you too,” he murmurs. “Every second.” 

“You know, there’s a therapist here,” she says cautiously. “We could—we could maybe try some counseling. Together.” 

He scoffs, pushing her back to look at her face. “Us? Couples counseling?” 

Bobbi smirks. “He was married to Melinda May.” 

“Oh hell yeah, we’re going to marriage counseling,” he grins. She leans forward and kisses him without thinking about it, warming when he immediately returns the kiss. 

“Sorry,” she sighs when he pulls away. “I didn’t even mean to do that.” 

“No complaints from me, love.” 

***   
When Jemma wakes up again, it is the morning, and she finds that she is alone. Panic temporarily sets in as she looks around desperately for any indication that this is a Hydra trick. The pain medication and sedatives have worn off, and she can now feel the searing pain of her wounds. 

She cries out as she tries to move, and Fitz slides into the room clumsily. 

“Jemma! You’re awake.” 

“Hi Fitz,” she says sweetly. “I was a little worried that I’d imagined being back.” 

He winces apologetically. “I’m sorry. I was making some tea for us. I’ll come bring it in here, just one minute, okay?” 

He leaves and returns quickly, handing her a cup of Earl Grey just the way she likes it. He sits beside her and tentatively sips at his own, watching her contented smile as she drinks. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks after a moment. 

“Terrible,” she admits. “I think the medication wore off.” 

Fitz nearly drops his mug in his haste to call for Trip, making Jemma laugh. “If you don’t mind, I’d like some time alone.” 

“Oh, I’ll uh, I’ll go—“ 

“Oh, Fitz,” she says. “I meant with you. If you just hand me the vial I can do it myself.” 

He swallows hard and finds the proper vial, making sure she double checks the label first. He finds a syringe and hands that to her as well, watching as she slowly pushes half of the vial into her IV. 

“I don’t want to get all loopy until I’ve had a chance to properly talk to you.” 

“Oh. Alright then.” 

“Fitz,” she starts, self consciously playing with her hair. “I missed you so much while I was away. And all I could think about when I was in that basement was getting back here and seeing you again. I don’t know if you got better without me, if me leaving was the right thing to do…but believing that it was, believing that I was doing this for you is what got me through it. And I just want you to know that no matter what happens from here, you will always be the most important thing to me.” 

The sincerity on her face and in her eyes melts him, and he places a kiss on her hand. 

“I did get better. I’m not really um, really sure if I would have gotten better if you were here or if you had to be gone. I don’t think we’ll ever know, Jemma. We do know that we can survive without each other, though. I didn’t like it, but I did it.” 

She nods at him wearily, looking unsure. He gives her a reassuring smile and continues. 

“Now that we’re—different, I think we should start over.” 

Jemma looks wounded by his statement and he shakes himself, frustrated. 

“I don’t mean it like that. I just mean that we can start new.” 

“But I don’t want to start new,” she admits quietly, pulling her hand away from him. “I’m a little bit different, Fitz, but I’m not new. I take my tea the same. My favorite color is still lilac. I still like the tenth Doctor best. I still wish we had access to a piano so that I could play sometimes. I still make the best homemade pesto aioli.” 

He gulps a breath of air that feels hard to take in. He reaches for her hand again and she tenses under his touch. “I know that, but a lot has still changed. I’m—I’m damaged. And so are you, now. This isn’t the Academy or SciOps or even the Bus. You fight—and you’re good at it. You were undercover.” 

“But was any of that really so different than before?” she whispers to him, taking her hand away from his once more. He feels cold, and wonders how this conversation has gone so terribly wrong so quickly. She stares at her finger tips and continues. “I threw myself out of a plane, Fitz. I jumped on a man with a grenade that I didn’t know was non-lethal. Can you really not reconcile that person with the one who put evidence into a wound and sewed it shut with whatever material was available?” 

He opens his mouth to speak, but she cuts him off again. “You thought you weren’t enough for me because you were different. You never understood that the way I feel about you, as my friend and—and otherwise, it can’t just be flipped like that. It’s not conditional. So if what you want is to start over, to start new like the last ten years or even the last six months never happened to us, then I—I can’t accept that.” 

Her voice breaks and her face crumbles, and Fitz feels something inside of him crumble, too. Jemma tries to hold back a sob but it slips from her anyway, and he feels tears filling his eyes. 

“Jemma,” he says gently. “Jemma, please look at me.” 

She shakes her head, eyes screwed shut. He moves to sit on the bed near her, brushing his hands soothingly over her shoulders and making gentle shushing noises. 

“I want Skye,” she finally gets out. “I want Skye.” 

“Okay, I’ll get her. Just let me—let me try to explain what I mean.” 

She shakes her head more fervently, and Fitz’s desperation continues to grow. 

“Jemma, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that we’re going to need some, uh, some time to—to—adapt.” 

Jemma begins to calm, and he feels her hands tighten on the fabric of his shirt. “Adapt?” 

“Yes,” he says firmly, tilting her chin to look at him. “I’m not saying we should, uh, we should pretend like we’re not FitzSimmons. We’re just—it’s more like—we’re like FitzSimmons Mach II.” 

Fitz’s blue eyes stare so earnestly into her own, and she finds herself nodding slowly. 

“I think I understand now.” 

“Do you?” he asks softly. “Because if you want me to keep talking about it, I can. I just—I want you to know I’m not going anywhere. I’m your best friend. No matter what.” 

She huffs, a little frustrated. “Do you really think this conversation has been about our bloody friendship, Fitz?” 

Now it’s his turn to look affronted. “Well excuse me for being worried about the most—the most important friendship in my life!” 

Jemma scoffs but she doesn’t remove her hands this time. “As if we’ve ever really had to worry about our friendship, Fitz!” 

“You left!” 

“You know why!” 

“You could have died!” 

“And yet I did not!” 

“I needed help!” 

“And I couldn’t help you! I remember you risking your life for me at the bottom of the ocean, Fitz! Do you think I’m not still a little angry about that? The way you feel about me leaving, even though it was for your own good, is the same way I feel about you forcing me to take that oxygen.” 

This silences him, and Jemma can practically see the gears turning in his head. Something like realization settles on his face, and she knows she’s won. 

“Oh. I see.” 

Jemma simply hums. 

“So I suppose we’re even then,” Fitz says, settling in at her side once more. She leans her head on him and nods. “If this wasn’t about our friendship, what was it, um, about?” 

“Oh, Fitz,” she sighs. “You’re much smarter than that. Now please be a dear and hand me the rest of that vial.” 

He does as she asks, and watches as the tension drains completely from her face and body once she’s given herself the proper dose of medication. 

“Fitz?” 

“Yeah, Jemma?” 

“Can you please get your laptop or something? I’d like to watch something.” 

“I’ll do you one better. Won’t even have to get up.” 

He manages to get his phone out of his pocket and sends a text to Skye, who arrives very shortly after with his laptop and a bowl of potato chips. She smiles widely at the way they’re curled up together, and sets the laptop on the small table beside Jemma’s bed. 

Fitz puts on an episode of Mythbusters, and Jemma murmurs nonsense to both him and the television show before she begins drifting back into sleep. He feels her place a lazy kiss on his collarbone and he shivers. 

The conversation really had been about more than that.


	11. is there somewhere we can go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That time that Ward makes guacamole and Fitz literally puts the stars in the sky for Jemma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So someone please tell me when my slow-burn angst fic turned into a fluff fest. I can't even be mad about it because honestly, it's hella cute. 
> 
> I started this story thinking it would be something completely different than it turned out to be. I learned a lot from it, and this is my first work in the AoS fandom, so it'll always have a place in my heart. Needless to say, it's not what I thought it would be. I just hope that it was enjoyable regardless! 
> 
> I may end up writing some little one-shots that will take place in this AUverse, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, here's the last chapter :)

Two Weeks Later 

“Come on, Jemma, you’ve got it,” Fitz says encouragingly from the other side of the other side of the parallel bars. She gives him a withering look through sweaty bangs but pushes on regardless, shaking legs carrying her toward him. 

“If I was ever this obnoxiously optimistic when you were here,” Jemma grits out, “then I sincerely apologize.” 

A few weeks ago, the insinuation that he was annoying her would have sent him cowering. Now, he chuckles fondly and rolls his eyes. 

“Always the complainer, Simmons. And for the record, yes you were.” 

She stops once more, eyes screwed shut and a whimper caught somewhere in her throat. Fitz nearly steps forward to help her, but he stops himself. He remembers what happened last time, and decides to let her ask if she needs him. Jemma inhales deeply through her nose and presses on. 

Fitz tries his hardest not to make any jokes about her serial-killer limp, but it’s just too tempting most of the time. This, however, is not one of those times. Unfortunately Skye doesn’t get the memo as she enters the room with May. 

“Jeeze, Freddy Kruger, you need some water?” Skye teases as she takes in Jemma’s sweaty face. 

Jemma’s dispassionate gaze leaves him and goes to Skye. “Let’s shoot some ice through your leg and see how you do, hm?” 

Skye grimaces in apology. “Sorry, Jemma. You just look---well, nevermind. You look beautiful. Never better.” 

“Oh, shut up,” Jemma shoots back, her tone soft enough to be teasing. 

“If you’d stop distracting her, please,” Fitz says crossly. “She’s kind of busy.” 

Skye put her hands up with a grin. “Sorry, I forgot the Jemma Simmons Defense Squad was in the room.” 

Fitz grumbles something unflattering under his breath but keeps his eyes on Jemma, who takes in one last deep breath and takes her last few steps until she reaches Fitz. He grabs her as she collapses onto him, and he lifts her off the ground slightly with a proud smile. 

“Told you that you could do it,” he murmurs into her hair. She beams over his shoulder and presses a kiss to his face. 

“I’m bloody exhausted now.” 

“I would honestly love to tease you guys right now but I’m coming up empty. It’s too cute,” Skye grudgingly admits. 

“Come on, Skye. We’re running behind.” 

May leads Skye away with a little smile toward Fitz, who gives her a thumbs up as he eases Jemma back into her wheelchair. 

“I hate this thing,” she grumbles. 

“I’m sure it’s not a big fan of you either,” Fitz shoots back at her. He can practically feel her eyes rolling, but he also knows instinctively that she’s smiling. 

“Not back to the med bay,” Jemma whines as he turns her down the hallway. 

“And where would you prefer to go?” 

“Anywhere!” Jemma moans. “I’m so sick of that place.” 

“I’m going to remind you of that next time you’ve imprisoned one of the rest of us,” Fitz chuckles. “You need to rest for a while, but after that I have a uh, a plan.” 

She turns to look at him with raised eyebrows. “What have you got up your sleeve?” 

“For me to know,” he grins, forgetting to finish the phrase as she smirks at him. “If you don’t want to go to the med bay, where can I park you?” 

“Your bunk, please,” she says sweetly. He stills for a moment before breaking out into a run, Jemma squealing from her seat. They nearly run Coulson over, but he leaps back into a doorway and watches them with a poor excuse for disapproval on his features. 

“No running in the Playground!” he shouts after them. 

Fitz slows down for just a moment before starting up again. Jemma lets out another little joyful scream and he feels it in his toes. The sound recalls ten years of little moments: tossing her into the fountain at the Academy on a walk home from the Boiler Room, watching her bowl her first strike, when he came back after their big fight to tell her that he would come with her on the Bus, standing beside her at the entrance of their mobile lab. 

“Oi, mate, take your time!” Hunter calls lewdly down the hallway.

“Hypocrite,” Bobbi jokes from his side. Jemma throws her head back and laughs as he screeches to a halt in front of his bunk. She leans forward to slide the door open and he pushes her inside, deftly spinning her to face him as he falls to his knees in front of her. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes sparkling with something he hasn’t seen since long before Ward revealed himself as Hydra. He realizes that he hasn’t really seen that Jemma Simmons sparkle since before she tossed herself out of the plane. 

He tries to catch his breath as his eyes fight to commit this image of her to memory. Jemma’s giggles slow, and he watches the expression on her face shift from exalted to breathlessly solemn. He gulps at the tenderness written all over her face, and she lifts a hand to rest against the stubble on his cheek. The corners of her lips quirk upward as he unconsciously nestles into her touch, and he feels her lean toward him. 

Fitz abruptly leans back away from her, toppling onto the ground. Her eyes widen in surprise and he sees a flash of hurt cross them. His tongue darts out to wet his lips nervously as she slowly lowers the hand that had been on his face, wringing it with her other one. 

“Maybe I would like to go back to the med bay,” Jemma says softly. She can’t stand to look at his guilty face. After their conversation in her hospital room two weeks before, she’d thought they were on the same page, but his reaction to her attempt to kiss him clearly indicates otherwise. He looks desperate for something to say, and so guilty and she can’t have that, so she shoots him an encouraging smile. “I think I may need some more medication, and perhaps a nap. You can wake me when it’s time for your plan?” 

He nods enthusiastically at her, still not speaking. She withholds a sigh as he pushes her back into the hallway, the earlier enthusiasm zapped from both of them. 

“That was even quicker than I imagined,” Hunter teases, “and my expectations were really quite low.” 

Bobbi, always more perceptive than her estranged husband, narrows her eyes at him. “Hunter, stop,” she hisses. He looks back at her with innocent eyes and shrugs. 

“What did I do this time?!” Jemma hears him yelp. 

“Oh my God,” Bobbi mumbles, and Jemma doesn’t even need to see her to know that her face is in her hands. 

They reach the med bay without breaking their mutual silence, and Jemma gives him a grateful little nod as he helps her back onto her bed. He stands awkwardly beside her for a moment before swooping in and dropping what she is sure is the world’s shortest kiss onto the top of her head. 

“See you later,” he murmurs to the floor, leaving her alone. She watches him go a heaves a deep sigh before grabbing for a pain pill and letting it lull her to sleep. She took her first steps today; that warranted a serious nap. 

*** 

“You did what?” Ward asks him slowly, hand stilling in its movements over the bowl in front of him. 

Trip looks to the heavens for help and then shakes his head at the engineer. “You’ve got to be kidding me, man.” 

“I just—I panicked. I have this whole plan for tonight and I thought—I thought, it, uh, would be ruined.” 

“I’m failing to see how the girl of your dreams kissing you could possibly ruin anything,” Mack supplies. 

“Ooh, am I missing girl talk?” Skye asks as she enters, swiping a beer out of the cooler that Mack is loading. When Fitz immediately begins to look everywhere but at her, she cracks it open and looks at the guys. “What did I miss? What did he do?” 

“Simmons tried to kiss him,” Ward supplies. “And instead of letting her, he moved back so fast he fell down. Now she’s sleeping in the med bay.” 

“This whole not-lying-anymore thing is not as good as I thought it would be,” Fitz growls at him. Ward simply shrugs and continues his guacamole project, letting Skye dispense the advice. 

“You’re killin’ me, Fitz,” Skye groans, sinking onto the stool beside him and taking a pull from her beer. “She made it clear weeks ago that she’s into you. Are you not feeling it anymore or something?” 

“What?! No!” he vehemently denies. “That’s not it at all. I just really want tonight to go perfectly for her.” 

“And you finally kissing her would ruin that how?” Skye asks skeptically. Mack snorts. 

“Exactly what I said.” 

Fitz huffs in frustration. “I don’t want today to be about me and her. It’s about—it’s just about her, and I don’t want to…to take that from her.” 

Skye’s face softens. “That’s a really sweet sentiment, Fitz. Just please tell me that you somehow recovered that.” 

“What d’you mean?” 

“I mean, did you make it clear that you weren’t repulsed by her trying to make a move on you?” Skye demands, her tone escalating quickly. His expression gives her the answer and she smacks the back of his head. “Fitz! You son of a bitch!” 

“Hey!” he protests. “Brain damage over here.” 

“Eventually you’ll have to stop playing that card,” Trip says as he arranges the veggie platter. 

“Well nobody’s going to eat your snack,” Fitz fires back. 

“That the best you could do, Turbo?” Mack teases. “Really?” 

Fitz knocks his forehead against the counter. “I’ve gone and mucked it all up, haven’t I?” 

“Not necessarily,” Skye says, rubbing his shoulders supportively. “But if you don’t want to wait another ten years before your next shot at smooching Simmons, you may wanna make tonight about you two.” 

He nods morosely in acceptance. “You’re all my witnesses that I tried.” 

“Did you though?” Ward comments dubiously. 

Skye shoots him a threatening glance and returns her gaze to Fitz. “Don’t take romantic advice from Ward.” 

“Doesn’t that mean I shouldn’t take romantic advice from you either?” 

Skye and Ward exchange an awkward look, and Ward colors. “At least I didn’t fall on the ground. Ever.” 

*** 

After Skye figured out what Fitz had done, she’d decided that he wasn’t the best person to retrieve Jemma for her surprise. Fitz insisted that she double-check the program she’d helped design for the occasion, so Bobbi’s skills were enlisted instead. The blonde stands nervously in the hallway in front of Jemma’s room in the med pay, contemplating the best way to wake her from the apparent night terror she’s stuck in. 

The biochemist twists and thrashes, sheets bundling in her weak legs. She lets out an occasional whimper, but otherwise remains silent; it is the contorted look of pain on her face that makes Bobbi’s stomach turn. Maybe tonight isn’t the best time for a party. Shaking herself, she steps forward and gently runs a hand down Jemma’s arm. 

“Simmons,” she says firmly. “Wake up. It’s not real. Come on, wake up.” 

Jemma snaps her head toward Bobbi’s voice so quickly that the specialist half-expects that she’s given herself whiplash. 

“Thatta girl. Wake up. It’s not real.” 

Jemma’s eyes snap open and she grabs onto Bobbi’s arm, hard. She attempts to twist it, but Bobbi is ready and easily slips out of the younger woman’s grasp. 

“Sorry,” Jemma croaks, chest heaving. 

“No worries,” Bobbi assures her. “I’m the one who woke you from a nightmare.” 

Jemma brushes a hand over her greasy hair and winces. “God, I need a shower.” 

Bobbi gives her a once-over, and while she’s pretty sure she’s expected to bring Jemma to the common area in the next twenty minutes, she agrees. The girl is in serious need of a shower, and she can only imagine how embarrassed she’d be showing up to an event all greasy and shiny. 

“I won’t lie to you, Simmons, you’re probably right on that one.” 

“I’m right about everything,” Simmons jibes, and Bobbi snorts. 

“Alright, Poindexter. Need a hand up?” 

“Yes, please.” 

Bobbi guides Jemma to the attached bathroom and sits her on the toilet as she adjusts the water temperature. She helps the other woman out of her clothes and laughs at Jemma’s blush. Bobbi turns around to make Jemma more comfortable, waiting until she’s concealed by the curtain to ease her onto the shower seat. 

“Um, Bobbi?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Would you mind—“ she asks, holding a wet hand out of the curtain. Bobbi stares at it in confusion, cocking her head to the side. 

“What can I get for you?” 

“I meant—could you—hold my hand? It’s just, the water. I sometimes—and I just had a dream that—“ 

Bobbi steps quickly over and takes Jemma’s hands in both of her own. “Say no more, Jemma. Not a problem.” 

She feels Jemma’s muscles relax, and when she’s ready, she holds out a towel for her to step slowly into before supporting her weight once more. 

“Skye sent me with this,” Bobbi says, nodding toward the bag at her feet. “She said you’d want to wear this for your surprise.” 

Jemma’s face lights up. “Ooh, I forgot about my surprise! Give it here.” 

Bobbi rolls her eyes. “Bossy. Here you go.” 

Inside is a simple, deep blue dress, and Jemma looks at it adoringly. It’s soft to the touch, and as she slips it on, it fits her like a glove. Fitted at the top with a tasteful v in the front, flaring out in a circle skirt at the bottom which stops a few inches past her wound, just above her knees. The best part of the dress is the silver threading, which forms the constellations all over. 

“Wow,” Bobbi whistles. “You look fantastic.” 

“Thank you,”Jemma says, running her hands through her wet locks. “It’s absolutely beautiful.” 

Bobbi offers to dry her hair for her, which Jemma gratefully accepts. She even lets Bobbi give her a natural make-up look, and tries her luck by asking Bobbi if she can use her new cane instead of the chair. 

“Fine,” Bobbi relents. “But I’m bringing the chair just in case.” 

Jemma’s wide smile lets Bobbi know she’s made the right choice, and she hands the scientist her black wooden cane. Bobbi leads the way to the common area, making idle small-talk until they’ve reached their destination. Jemma hears music coming from the end of the hall, and looks suspiciously toward Bobbi. Bobbi holds her hands up in surrender, smirking. 

“It was all Fitz.” 

Jemma takes a deep breath, swallowing back the lump in her throat, and limps into the room, gasping at the sight in front of her. 

The common room is nearly unrecognizable, the walls appearing as though they are swirling nebulas, stars projected in three dimensions. She reaches out in front of her and her hands pass through the light. The purples, pinks, and blues of the nebulas on the walls allow her to see her friends in front of her. Fitz stands awkwardly in the middle, scratching at the spot just next to his ear in a tell-tale sign of his nervousness. 

“Happy early birthday, Jemma.” 

Her cane clatters to the floor and she wavers, swaying awkwardly as she attempts to move toward him. Fitz moves quickly, and she’s pretty sure that in all her years of scientific discovery and exploration, she’s never seen anything quite like Fitz moving through the stars toward her. When his hands grasp gently at her waist to hold her upright, she grabs the back of his curls and pulls his lips down to meet hers. 

She faintly hears Skye cheer and she definitely hears Hunter cat-call before he gets slapped by his wife. 

“Way to go, Turbo!” Mack chants happily. 

“Damn, girl!” Trip jokes. 

“I guess Section 17 is officially void,” Coulson laments as he watches his scientists deepen their kiss in spite of their audience. 

Jemma hears it all but none of it registers. She’s kissing Fitz. Her Fitz. Leopold Fitz. And he’s kissing her back, holding her up and tightening his arms around her middle to hold her securely. 

She finally breaks away for air and stares at him as his blue eyes flutter open. 

“Did we really wait ten bloody years to do that?” she breathes. He nods, looking dazed. “And I thought we were supposed to be geniuses.” 

“I helped design all these techno-stars,” Skye cuts in from the other side of the room. “Do I get kissed too?” 

“Please say yes.” 

Hunter gets smacked by Bobbi once more. 

Jemma pulls back from Fitz long enough to look around at her team in wonder. “Thank you all so much. This is amazing. Truly, truly amazing.” 

“Like I said, it was mostly Fitz,” Bobbi repeats. He shrugs shyly and Skye interrupts once more. 

“And also a lot of me!” 

“Come here, then,” Jemma laughs, and Skye bounces toward her to take her from Fitz for a squeeze of her own. Jemma’s legs start to shake, and Trip wheels the chair up behind her wordlessly. She gratefully drops into it and laughs as Coulson pops a bottle of champagne with a happy cry. Even May is smiling, holding a red cup out to get herself a drink. 

“This is perfect,” Jemma tells Fitz as he wheels her over to the food and drinks. Fitz looks over to the rest of his friends. Trip seems to be trying (and failing) to instruct Ward on how to dance while Skye looks on with a mouth full of food that he’s pretty sure she’s going to choke on any minute if she keeps laughing like that. May and Coulson exchange a secret smile and he’s pretty sure he sees money change hands. Lance lazily slings an arm over Bobbi’s shoulders, and instead of smacking him, she just rolls her eyes and pecks him on the cheek. Mack joins in on making fun of Ward, and he has to agree; it really does feel perfect. Coulson hands her a cup of champagne and Fitz spins her around. This time he kisses her when he kneels down, and he's pretty sure he's dreaming when Jemma grins into his mouth. 

"I love you," he tells her, voice low. Coulson's eyes widen and he quickly ushers May away. Fitz is pretty sure he even hears May let out a surprised laugh, but there's no way to confirm that it's really her; he's never heard the noise before. Jemma looks up at him with wide hazel eyes. "Wow I uh, I didn't mean to say that." 

"Fitz, that's alright." 

"No, not like that," he says firmly. "I've been-I've been screwing this up since the pod. I do mean it. I love you, Jemma. You were right. You're still uh, you're still the person who fixes the buttons on my shirt when I mess them up. And you still have terrible taste in books, and you're still willing to sacrifice everything for the people you care about. You're all the things you were before but now you can kick my ass." 

She laughs loudly, eyes alight. 

"And I'm the same. I still mess up the buttons. I still have superior taste in books, and I'm still always going to follow you anywhere. I just-sometimes take a little longer now. But that's okay." 

"We're okay," Jemma breathes, pulling him in for a heated kiss. "I love you too, Leo." 

She looks up at the elaborate light show all around them. 

"You literally put the stars in the sky for me." 

"Yeah, well, I am a rocket scientist." 

She rolls her eyes and takes a sip of her champagne. He beams at her until the rest of the team demands her attention. He'll have plenty of time for this. 

They'll have plenty of time for this.


End file.
